Shooting Board Question

[tablesawtom]

I am in the process of making a shooting board. So far I have the plane ground flat with the two sides ground square to the bottom.I also have the flats at the top of the plane ground parallel to the bottom and both are the same height.

I bought two extruded aluminum rules because I figured they would be about as straight a piece of metal as I could get without buying precision ground stock. As you can see from the pictures I have them mounted on a piece of prefinished plywood.

It is a no shake sliding fit. I did need to stick some sandpaper to a block of wood and run it down both pieces to achieve the fit I wanted. Now the plane slides between the two pieces of aluminum and the outside piece will not allow the cutting force to push the plane away from the cut.

I know I need a back stop so that I can trim an end. I just haven't got that far yet. The problem is if I wish to trim the other end I would have to flip the piece over and then I would be registering off from a different surface. and that goes against every manufacturing principal I know of.

If I make the shooting board flat I can turn both the board around and the plane over and put another back stop on the other end and I could trim both ends.

I have also seen shooting boards which are angled. I would like to hear from some who can give me both pros and cons of either style. also if angled what angle. I just decided if I angle mine I will build two shooting boards. Then I will have both a right and left handed one. Actually I am going to do a left and a right hand style no matter whether I decide on flat or angled.







In case someone is wondering why the rules , the blade will always be over the rules and so the blade will never change the fit.

Thanks in advance for the responces to this post.

Tom

[Ken P]

To register from the same side for both ends I don't rotated my piece, I flip it vertically. This keeps the same side of the work piece against the fence. Of course if your fence in not dead on ninety degrees, this method doubles your error. Can't comment on the other style of shooting board mine is just the flat one. Put some good thought into your fence, making it adjustable to angle and also some way of extending it toward the plane.

Ken

[tablesawtom]

If you flip it vertically you are still registering off from a different surface. You have just changed datums. It is like cutting tenons using a table saw, just flip the over and cut the other side so you can have hopefully one that fits right ,one that is to tight and 2 that are to loose and they were all run through the planner at the same time. Ever notice that all style and rail cutters cut both checks at the same time and are all referenced off from the same side. Or why if a groove is cut in a board and then a rabbit is cut in a piece of plywood with a rabitting bit in a router, why part of the tongue will slip and somewhere along the way it tightens up. The tongue thickness is registered from one surface and the router from a different surface.

[Ken P]

Both Dave and I are referring to registering off the edge of the piece, I think you are now talking about doing it this way changes from one face of the board to the other. And that is true, but I think you are stuck with picking one way or the other. Since my material comes from a good planer and should have good, accurate thickness, I use the edge and flip the work piece. The perfect way would seem to be a shooting board with both left and right. Again that only works if your board is dead accurate on both sides. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Your machinist background is showing, nothing wrong with that.

Ken

[DaveParkis]

I also flip the piece to shoot the other end. As Ken said, it's critical that the fence be dead square to the track, but that's all that matters as far as I know. Personally, rather than have the fence be adjustable, I prefer to use inserts that rest against the fence to adjust for angles.

[Ken P]

Dave, the adjustment in the fence I mentioned would be to adjust accuracy, not to shoot angled pieces. I sometimes use an angle block on the board and use that method a lot on my RAS that I don't change from ninety degrees because I don't want to get the saw out of adjustment.

Ken

[DaveParkis]

Oh, sorry. I have seen fences that pivot and I thought that's what you meant.

[Anji12305]

I take a small chamfer out of the piece being trimmed at the "far" side of the cut. That way, there's little chance of breakout.

If you include the sacrificial stop in each pass, breakout will be rare.
There's no need to turn the workpiece over, if your blade is ground square and the joint comes tight.

The whole point is to set up a single reference to reduce errors.

My suggestion would be to set up the sacrificial stop with a pin in the center and a single screw to fix it when you get things square.

Of more importance (in my opinion) is the relation between the chute and the reference surface. That needs to be perpendicular through the length of the shaving, or nothing will come tight.

FYI - I use a much shorter plane for my chute board. A #5 is plenty.
The no. 62 is my go to when things are twitchy.

For jointing long panels, the #7 and a benchtop fixture works for me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbkdWMIBhNc

[rwe2156]

I don't see the advantage of guide strips.
Shooting board is quite simple just a 1/4" overlay with a fence dead square.

Angled fences - I would just determine the angle and screw down a fence to match/remove when done.

[Bibliophile 13]

Just a couple observations from my point of view:

- I wouldn't find guide strips useful at all. Often, if you have a lot of material to remove, you want to start planing with the plane a little bit off the sidewall and make only your last couple finishing cuts with the plane in contact with the sidewall--if that makes any sense. I guess you could just advance the workpiece instead, but advancing it one shaving thickness at a time seems tedious to me. Better to just let the plane move in as it removes material, stopping when it stops cutting--just like a depth-stop on a plow or rabbet plane.

- I can't think of a time when I've wanted a left-handed shooting board. I can shoot anything I need on my one right-handed one. Yes, the faces of the workpiece have to be co-planar, but that's just a matter of getting your order of operations in the right order. I always plane the faces before I shoot the ends.

- My own shooting board is here on my blog. Not nearly as nice as yours looks (and I'm all in favor of nice-looking shop fixtures!), but serviceable. My philosophy is always in favor of the simplest jig possible. There's just less to go wrong.