Building a shooting board
As an engineer one of the problems I initially had with
woodworking was a perception of inherent inaccuracy. It seemed that it
was impossible to be truly accurate with a live medium like wood. This
belief is ridiculous considering all the masterpieces of both
architecture and furniture created in wood over the centuries. For
some reason I just had a cognitive disconnect between all the
masterfully joined cabinets and tables I had ever seen and the idea
that it started out as raw hunks of wood.
The first time I used a properly tuned hand plane my cognitive
disconnect disappeared. Hand planes let you thoughtfully shape wood -
removing whisper thin shavings one at a time. A shooting board is a
jig for holding smal stock while one of its faces is flattened and
precisely set to an angle relative to the face resting on the board.
My shooting board is a very simple and large design that I just
knocked together. There are much better tutorials describing shooting
boards out there. I strongly suggest any wood worker check out
this tutorial
and do some simple Googling for the proper use of a shooting
board.
|
I built my shooting board from two pieces of wood. The runway -
the part the plane slides alonge - was made from UHMW
plastic. This enables the plane slide smoothly over the hard
plastic while cutting the wood piece on the baseboard.
|
|
I planed a small lip into the top board. This provides both
clearance for the plastic runway covering and provides an area
for cut material to accumulate off the runway. Strange but it
helps a lot.
|
|
This picture shows the shooting board in use. I cut a one-inch
thick strip of cherry and wanted to flatten its sides and
insure they were mutually square. The cherry stock rests
against the shooting board fence. As the plane cuts into the
stock the stock is pushed into the fence.
Normally there is a
cleat on the base of the shooting board to prevent the board
from slipping when the stock pushes on the fence. I have not
added a cleat to my board yet because I still have not figured
out how I like using it yet. Instead I am using the clamp you
can see in the upper right hand corner of the picture. That or
I place the board on a low bench or the ground and secure the
board with my knee. Sounds uncomfortable but gives amazing
results.
|
Email -- joeboy(at)hhhh.org
Back to my home page.