A shooting board is simple and I have 2 standard boards and 1 miter shooting board. In using them recently, I discovered that running the hand plane (I use my jointer plane) against the board and on my bench, mars up my bench severely. This is unacceptable as I don’t want to have to resurface the top very often.
So I looked at my basic shooting board and determined that I could put 1/4″ ply on the bottom but make it wider than the actual shooting board. This would allow the hand plane to ride on the 1/4″ ply instead of my bench. On the bottom of the shooting board and 1/4″ ply sandwich, I put the hook on the bottom so that it can hook on the bench.
On the 1/4″ ply where the hand plane will run, I will probably put a few coats of wax for easy sliding of the hand plane against the shooting board.
I think this is a simple solution but it ought to work really well. I hope to finish what I started tomorrow (I had to dismantel my existing shooting boards and then reassemble with the 1/4″ ply. Fortunately, I didn’t glue but screwed them together. This time it’s the glue). I had to create a new 90 degree fence as my existing one (which was a scrap of oak), split. I do want the fence to be less thick so that I can use it as a simple bench hook also for thinner boards.
I’ll let you know how this works.
[...] in my previous post on Shooting board, I said I was putting runners for the hand plane to ride against. That worked [...]