# I made a shooting board for the new Veritas plane



## bobasaurus (Sep 6, 2009)

I recently bought one of the fancy Veritas shooting board planes and discovered the limitations of my existing shooting board. So I built a new one out of melamine, poplar, beech, and some baltic birch ply for the rail. I opted for a solid hardwood top so I could plane it flat (every piece of plywood/melamine/etc I found was warped in some way). I used William Ng's "5 cuts" (actually 4 cuts on a shooting board) method with a feeler gauge to square the fence, and it worked like a charm.

Here it is in action with the fancy plane:



















In the pictures I'm planing a 8×9" walnut panel square on all sides. I'm able to cut face grain and end grain in nearly any direction without tearout (I do occasionally get chattering cuts on end grain slices that I can't figure out… flipping the board over seems to help). After the last cut, the remaining edge sat perfectly flush against the plane face without any gaps, so the fence squaring procedure worked really well. I really like having the rail on the plane track… keeps me from putting any lateral force on the plane so it's much easier on my wimpy arms. Someday I'll make a miter attachment too.

Eventually I might build a ramped version to even out wear on the plane, but for now this works great.


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## WayneC (Mar 8, 2007)

Very nice. Sounds like your loving the plane.


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## Timbo (Aug 21, 2008)

Nice Allen, have you tried to wet the end grain with mineral spirits? Just wondering if that would help the chatter. I could not pull the trigger on one of these so I am putting the finishing touched on a shop made shooting plane and board.


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## paratrooper34 (Apr 27, 2010)

The chattering could be coming from a lack of pressure being held from the plane to the surface being cut. Because you cannot apply a downward force to a shoot plane, you have to rely on keeping the pressure on the piece being cut into the sole of the plane. Also, shoot board planes must have a very sharp blade all the time. This plane is not as forgiving when the blade starts to dull as a traditional bench plane is. And with this plane being an end grain workhorse, it requires a lot of honing to keep the blade performing well. I have a LN version and I sharpen the blade frequently when I am making a lot of cuts on the shoot board. My previous shoot board plane, a Record T-5, was equipped with a factory blade and that thing dulled very quickly. I eventually switched it out to an A2 Veritas blade and it helped keep an edge longer. The nice thing about your plane is the skewed blade. With my LN and its skewed (and sharp) blade, I can trim any hardwood with ease and you don't need to wet the end grain. Best of luck, you got a real nice plane there.


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## bobasaurus (Sep 6, 2009)

Tim, that's a good idea about wetting the grain… I'll give it a try.

Mike, the weird part is the chatter seems to be repeatable whenever it happens, like it's some feature of the grain. If I get a slight chatter on one edge, it's always in the same part of the cut every time I take a slice, and then the rest of the edge is smooth. When this happens, I back off the cut then increase it until I start getting dust at first then a full shaving… and the chatter resumes. I might just need to re-hone the blade and try again (though I've done this a few times). It's a PM-V11 blade, the first one I've used… honing it is trickier than A2 as the burr is really resilient. It does seem to hold an edge for a very long time, though. This chattering problem was happening frequently with a piece of beech, which was also tricky to plane normally due to the density, but all other woods seem to work well so far with only occasional minor chatter.


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## Timbo (Aug 21, 2008)

I have been reading about wear on the back side of bevel up plane irons, you may want to consider adding a back bevel on the back side of your iron. Here are a couple threads on this subject.

http://blog.lostartpress.com/2012/03/17/back-bevels-for-block-planes/

http://sauerandsteiner.blogspot.com/2010/07/up-down-bevels-that-it.html


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## bobasaurus (Sep 6, 2009)

I do have a slight back bevel since I use the ruler trick when sharpening. And wear doesn't seem to be much of a problem with the pm-v11 blade. That's good information though.


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## Timbo (Aug 21, 2008)

Oh well, thought it was worth mentioning. I have not tried that blade yet. I have the A2 in the LA Jack and the back bevel helped a lot.


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