My Shooting Board #1: Another method for making this handy tool

After seeing the neat job that MOT/ Tom did with his shooting board I was enticed to make one of my own.
I am in the middle of milling some wood for small boxes so I will needed something to handle these small gauge materials.
I am a pack rat and wood hoarder by genetic make up so when I dug through one of my precious piles of scrap I found an old poplar plywood shelf, a piece of arborite (Tom’s idea) and a piece of 3/4” fir flooring plywood.
The rest were off cuts of oak walnut etc that would have been firewood.
Once I milled the stops to dead flat and square the rest went fairly quickly.
You have to get the stop lined up with the shooting edge at or very near 90 degrees and the shooting edge should be almost perfect in length and vertical as possible.
The reason I split the stop in two pieces was to allow for an alignment should the need occur.
I can shim the walnut piece on either end to shift the workpiece to plumb.

Once the board was assembled I could use my plane to flush trim the stop block and align the guide edge up to the stop block. Tom was right about the arborite under the plane ,it really reduced the drag, I had to cut a 1/2” relief under the top board to let the arborite slip under for a good fit.

Next I tested with my low angle block plane. Not a really good one but it does the trick.
It cut the African black wood like a butter knife and gave me a nice sharp 90 degree angle.

Next I made the 45 degree attachment for lining up flat boards as per picture frames and box corners etc.
These have to be dead on so take your time if you are making one of these.

The final shot was a jig to get 45’s on the bevels . I have always had a problem with this cut and spent many moons sanding the wood until it was too short. I’m hoping this jig will eliminate a lot of that.

The next step is to get some decent plane irons so Mr. Hock will be getting a call soon.

Here are references for the plans I used

Enjoy

Bob

-- A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner