Of donkey's ears and benchhooks.

Some shop aids/jigs are so simple that they fly under the radar. Others have been somewhat lost in the mists of time. Others are superseded by technology. I personally like to use hand tools, I find it much more relaxing and safer than loud whirling blades. These have their place, and I use them also. Just not my preference. In any case, using hand tools can be very nice for working on really small pieces of wood for inlay banding and the like. It can also be an exercise in frustration without some simple tricks and jigs. This leads us to the very simple, yet essential benchook/shooting board.

Not much to it. 3 pieces of wood and some screws. Most critical to its success is this:

If you’ve got 90 degrees, you are golden! This serves as a great reference point for adding angle blocks for trimming miters as shown here:

Bench hooks aren’t only for trimming, no siree! You can use them as a guide to start a cut with a handsaw, also to hold work during carving, paring or mortising. The only limit is your imagination. Switch blocks and rotate pieces for compound multiple miters on small frames. Etc, etc. Also makes a good base for your friend and mine the miter box:

Want to cut a couple hundred perfectly equilateral triangles of 1/8th inch a side in side grain? Miter box. Anyhow that’s getting beyond the scope of this entry. Moving on to how does one trim WIDE miters? Enter the donkey ear. Sort of a fancy adaptation of the benchhook, it is very nice to have one when called for.

Just take your workpiece and clamp it down, trim it a bit and scoot it up until you reach your line for the miter. Here’s a better view of the side.

You can also trim chamfers on long skinny pieces with it or make others of varying angles to suit your purposes.
I’ve been toying with the idea of t-track on a benchhook or maybe some screw inserts in the vein of modern crosscut sleds.

I hope at least someone finds this useful or informative. I couldn’t imagine doing handwork without these.
If anyone has a cool trick with these or a use I haven’t mentioned feel free to add your comment! Got a hand-tool jig that you feel is essential? I’d like to hear about that too.

-- Ooo, er.