Shooting Boards - How do you make yours?

[LancsRick]

Title is best read in the voice of the Crème Egg presenter in my opinion .

So some people will have spotted an increase in the number of threads by me related to hand planes lately, as I stop being a powered wood butcher and more into the finer and more traditional ways to cock up a perfectly good piece of timber . One thing I'm rapidly learning is that there are as many different views on how to go about some things as there are years they have existed for.

So, shooting boards. 90 degrees and 45 degree mitres. If you're not using a "proper" edge plane, what are your preferred designs and why? Flat? Donkey ear? etc?

Cheers.

 

[AndyT]

You'll probably get some replies showing beautifully made hardwood boards with adjustable brass stops. I'm sure they are excellent but please don't think that you must spend hours making one.

This is mine, knocked together from a bit of melamine faced chipboard and some softwood offcuts, in use with a modernish Stanley No 4.

I've used it for years and not got round to making anything "better" as it works just fine.

 

[Farmer Giles]

This guy has a nice simple board that seems to tick all the boxes for me, but I will watch this thread with interest as I can't find my old shooting board and was about to make this one. I shall hold back a while

 

[morfa]

Mine is a bit like AndyT's. Nice and simple, just a few bits of ply and then a piece of pine as the stop. Oh and there's a slim bit of pine on the bottom to put it in a vice.

 

[custard]

Simple is good.

Shooting boards are one of the many rabbit holes dotted around the woodworking landscape. Too many beginners fall down this one and get obsessed with making the "ultimate shooting board", only to then discover that every shooting board drifts in and out of accuracy so needs constant tinkering, which gets progressively trickier the more over engineered it is. Another thing to remember is that you'll constantly be lifting your shooting board on and off your bench, so "light and handy" is far better than "heavy and unwieldy".

I use several shooting boards for different applications, including a 2 metre monster for shooting veneer edges, but one of my favourites is a simple design that runs along the bench rather than across it,

As you can see, the fence has a groove underneath that mates with a corresponding baton on the base, this means it's easy to knock it off and on, therefore it's easy to true it up whenever the accuracy drifts, and it's also easy to tap it up flush to the cutting edge. In a full time professional workshop this design of shooting board normally lasts about two years before it gets too battered and needs replacing, a task which takes about twenty minutes.

The other advantage of this style of shooting board is it's ideal for shooting the longer workpieces you normally get with long grain shooting, for example stuff like drawer sides or drawer bottoms. Thin workpieces are tricky to edge joint by hand, so shooting them makes a lot of sense. If you make boxes or projects with drawers then you'd be well advised to look seriously at this style of shooting board.

 

[Honest John]

I made the Paul sellers styled one a few ears ago and have found it an essential bit of kit. Simple to construct (with care), and no exotic materials used.

 

[woodenstx]

Here is mine.
19mm MDF with 6mm Ply ontop and some sort of hardwood stop. Applied some of my favourite car wax to the running face
Seems to work better with my block plane than my No4 though.
Not a perfect build but it does net true faces etc

 

[DTR]

Custard, that is rather clever. Mine is just two bits of ply glued together, and a redwood fence (for me ply is a exotic material!)