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Fig. 1: Illustrations of Different Shooting Boards
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One of the most common tools in the arsenal of pretty much every hand tool shop is a shooting board, a couple examples of which you can see illustrated in Fig. 1 that are based on illustrations from one of Charle's Hayward's writings, "The Complete Book of Woodwork".
I don't know how many of these I've cobbled together over the years. Usually from scrap, and often - because I'm usually more worried about the project than how I put together the shooting board - thrown away not long after because I don't take the time to make it properly.
Essentially, a shooting board (or 'chute' board in some lands) in its simplest form a simple fence that allows one to plane an edge or end on on a piece of wood to a known angle, commonly 45 or 90 degrees. It provides a shelf to place the wood on to raise it so the blade of the plane used is fully exposed to the wood (if it isn't a rabbet plane, the blade doesn't go all the way to the edge of the plane).
The plane used can be a specially made "miter plane", made just for the purpose - one such as Lie Nielsen's iron miter plane, but usually it is just a standard bench plane whose sole has checked to be perpendicular to its side.
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Fig. 2. The Evenfall Woodworks Shooting Board
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Rob Hanson (no relation) has come up with an interesting product - one he's been selling through his blog page at the Evenfall Woodworks web site. You can see his version of a shooting board in Fig. 2 at work with a low angle bench plane.
If you look closely, you'll notice a series of holes in the body of his shooting board. This is what makes Rob's product devilishly clever - its fully adjustable to different angles.
I'm impressed. It's bloody ingenius.
Read more about Shooting Boards from Evenfall Woodworks
