Mitre shoot or not?

[ajbell]

Hi All

I want to make my first solid wood project and am going to start with
a picture or mirror frame with hand cut mitres.

I was thinking of making a mitre shooting board to use for this - Is there is an upper limit in thickness which you can shoot before the plane losses momentum and you need to move to free-hand planing?

I have a no.5 plane which I could try to shoot with and a low angle block plane which I thought I could use if I needed to free hand plane the mitres.

Is there a standard technique for adjusting the angle of the mitre if you free hand plane and find there are gaps in the joint (I know that with the shooting board you can add pieces of card or paper to adjust the angle as required) Or do you simply note the errors and adjust these local areas and retry the fit?

thanks

Andy

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hi Andy,

Depends on the hardness of the wood, but you should be OK up to about an inch thick on the shooting board. I find a heavier plane works best and usually use a #6 Clifton. Have a tight mouth and very sharp blade.

I had to plane some oak end-grain recently which needed to be accurate and I had to do it freehand because it was too thick for the shooting board. I knifed a line around the wood then chiseled a 'V' and sawed off the waste away from the line. The chiseled bit gave me a reference to plane to, resulting in an accurate job. I fould for this particular job my #3 Clifton worked best. Again a tight mouth and very sharp blade. With a tight mouth, don't have the cap iron set too close or the shavings will jam.

Hope this helps.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[ajbell]

Paul

I may try that idea out, I guess the chisel gives a more obvious ref to plane to than the knife line.

I think my marking technique is not currently the best which does not help!

If you were marking out 45 deg mitres would you use a 45 deg set square or use a sliding bevel gauge?

andy

 

[Steve Maskery]

You should use a 45 degree TRY square. Don't forget that it is not suffficient for all the joints to be perfectly 45 degrees, opposite sides of the frame must be exactly the same length too.

HTH
Steve

 

[Paul Chapman]

If you were marking out 45 deg mitres would you use a 45 deg set square or use a sliding bevel gauge?

Either would do - provided the angle was exactly 45 degrees. If you buy a 'square', the all-metal, engineers type are usually more accurate than the woodworkers ones.

For accuracy, doing the planing on a shooting board (provided the wood isn't too thick) would be preferable to doing it free-hand.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[ajbell]

Thanks guys

I think I will buy a 45 deg try square.

Andy

 

[bugbear]

Hi All

I want to make my first solid wood project and am going to start with
a picture or mirror frame with hand cut mitres.

I was thinking of making a mitre shooting board to use for this - Is there is an upper limit in thickness which you can shoot before the plane losses momentum and you need to move to free-hand planing?

In picture frames, I would expect to be able to shoot almost unlimited width - say 4", since the material is normally quite soft, and thin.

You shouldn't need to rely on momentum if the shaving is thin, and the blade SHARP.

The ultimate mitre shooting appliance is the mitre jack, which allows two handed planing.

http://www.cornishworkshop.co.uk/wwmitrejack.html

http://www.toolemera.com/Books%20&%20Bo ... plans.html
(bottom)
BugBear

 

[afreegreek]

people rely TOO MUCH on gadgets.. you want a mitre on two equal or different width pieces of material?? use the material as the gauge.. knife a 90 degree line (one face, one edge) on a piece where you want the end to be. place your second piece's edge to that line and make second knife mark where the width of the second piece ends. join those two points and that's your line. be it 45.00009 degrees or whatever. knife and saw to that line, clean up to the line with your block plane and you're done. you don't need a super duper micro mitre gauge or a 3 foot long plane and shooting board. other than the saw and wood, all you need is a square, a knife, and a sharp block plane.

pooh pooh they say.... ya, well if you can't make a 6 or 8 inch joint with a block plane, a super shooter 3000 isn't going to help you either.

 

[wizer]

Can you please stop dragging up old threads afreegreek

 

[lurker]

Can you please stop dragging up old threads afreegreek

Now now wizer [-X
He has as much right to do what he wants so long as it don't break rules.

Lets not frighten off a newby (and a talented one at that!) by being unfriendly