I want to show you a piece of essential
equipment in the hand tool shop it's called a shooting board and I have had
one of these pretty much all my working life and what this is, this is
essential to hand tool woodworking because it's the only way we can actually true up the
ends of 45 degrees or 90 degrees on the end of a piece of wood so if I wanted to
true up the end of this piece of wood I could take this, slide my plane along
here and it would guarantee the end being square similarly I can take a mitred
piece that I've pre-cut on a rough cut and take my plane and and trim up
the end of that would so this is one that I use, it's got some hard material on the
surface that makes the plane slide smoothly and I've used plywood because
it was the combination of the two were in one board but I want to show you how
to make one just out of pine so that you can get started straight away if you
need a shooting board then you can make one with a few pieces of wood I've got two three pieces here I've got
a short piece which is going to go across here so that's eight inches long
one and a quarter wide and seven eighths of an inch thick it could be three
quarters this one is four inches by 19
inches by 7, 8 thick and this one is a 1 by 8 and this one is 19 inches long so this piece will sit on here this will
go underneath here as a stop so I can anchor it in my vise and then I've got this piece here to
make some sliding wedges that go into recesses, one of the things we're going
to do is we're going to be going long grain to long grain, so will be gluing
this board to this board but before we do that we can cut all our recesses in
here we've got three recesses to cut one at 90 degrees and then two a 45
where the wedges will slide in so first of all it shall we map
that out on this piece of wood so from the end here measure down five inches, square that
line across and then I'm just going to split the distance with what I got left
here which is 14 so I'm going to go seven inches I'm going to mark 45 degrees on here
from the line and then I'm going to cross this line here by about one inch
from this mark here down here is not a critical measurement so I'm saying about
1 inch and that's going to give me the positions for my recesses so my wedge is
going on this side and on this side and then it's going on this side so next I'm going to cut my
wedge shape I'm going to cut this to the same wedge I have on this so I'm going
to measure this one these are reversible so you can flip this this way and this
way and these are wedged because they are sacrificial you may need to replace
these from time to time because the plane trims the end very frequently so
I've got a measurement here this is going to be one and five-eighths
on the end of here so I'm going to go 1 and five eighths here like
this take a straight edge and join those two
lines this is thicker than the other material
the wedge material is thicker it because this needs to stand up above this one is
a little thin so I'm improving here I'm adding this
thicker material I'm going to cut this down now make my
wedge because these wedges are going to be
used separately they'll never be used in the same recess so they don't have to be
identical so you could clamp them together like this and you can make them
identical if you want to, I was going to do it just to
stabilise my plane and give me a wider surface trying to make sure you're straight and
not bowed in the middle you don't want a belly on this I got my two pieces the same, could do
the other side you can tell I'm against the grain on
that one so now my wedges are identical there's no conflicting size I now take here and place these
on here I'm allowing it to overhang a little bit
here because I'm going to trim that later this will just show the position here I'm taking this to this point here not here because we're
going to be cutting this to 45 here in a little while, this is purely to show you
the position so we can lay out for the recess and get the depths so you can see here this here and here
and here and here these are going to show that's going to
be marking gauge line between these two lines will give me the exact depth so
you can set whatever depth you want I wouldn't go more than a quarter of an
inch that's plenty so now I eyeball that so I checked
myself and I'm right on quarter of an inch you can train your eye to do that here is my depth line push or pull, I'm
pulling so you can see but normally I would use this this way and I would push
this, like this this one goes all the way through now from here on its going to be a super
sharp knife because these three lines here the forty fives
and the 90-degree have to be absolutely perfect so I'm going to just touch up my knife,
coarse fine and superfine Let's do the square one first, you'll be able
to see here, this is a knife wall this is the edge that the plane is going to ride against so because of that I'm taking
all of my settings from this face this is going to be a registration face so my knife goes directly on here very
light pass at first, noticed the configuration of my hand here I've got
my thumb this is the nice thing about combination
squares my thumb is pressing here these two fingers oppose the thumb so I get a
good grip and then these two fingers press the main beam of the
square down and that keeps everything nice and flat so here like this so dead square and then you're 45 mark, very gently at first, see my thumb my finger opposing three fingers
on the top because of the extra length here that's my knifewall done on that one flip over and pull gently then more
heavily and then you can go as heavy as you like really after that it's not going to
alter this then goes into the Vise every time we go into the vise for
safety gives us a good rigid so here I go along here along here this shooting board will last you
forever even in pine, it's never really going to deteriorate unless you get wet
or sometimes wood gets wet that ruins with more wood than I know of anything
really part from fire so use your chisel, bevel up to chisel
into that knifewall now here what I'm going to do is I'm
going to go a little bit deeper with my knifewall with the knife and after that
I can go in with the saw this will just deepen that curve at that cut like this slide up this is so precise really long as you
have an accurate square, from here I might deepen this like this click, that will go down to the depths of
that cut the same with this one now we can saw down to the gauge line
with the finer saw keep your thumb against the side of the
saw your fingers on the side of the saw pushing into the knifewall all the way
along very quickly pull not to jump out and establish another wall not not a very critical depth really now
this one we're going to cut this one we're going to establish this with the
knife in a minute and I'm going to go with my chisel again
here I want to try to remove a lot of this
waste here almost all the way across to this of the
line on this side just going to it until you can feel it
split I'm not, I'm not trying to hit into this other wall I'm just doing it until
it splits you can see watch here now I'm stopping here I don't need to go any
closer and then I just flick and that gets me into near the area and then I
can see where I'm going with my chisel so I might go a little bit near here to
this one you'll see why in a minute this one the same don't hesitate to use a mallet here you
know chisel hammer like I'm using this last
bit here and what I've got now is I've got something that I can really properly
register my wedge against and I can establish this knifewall perfectly so
I'm going to slide forward until this edge comes up to that or even passed, it
wouldn't matter if I went past I keep this long so I'll have a
long registration face when I place my wood against it so maybe go even
an eighth of an inch past then take your knife once you have that registered just press
it and keep it in place and run your knife right along this I'll take this out for a minute and show you on
the other one 'cause the pencil lines were just a a rough guideline to get you
in place so I'm registering against this face here perfect with no gap so that when I come
to this face this and this side of the wedge a can take my knife now come right
onto this here, make a good pass and the same again so that is exactly where my knifewall
needs to be, it's perfect now I could use the same wedges I
said so I may mark this one now 45 and this one 90
just for my reference but at the moment it doesn't matter it will matter
soon so this one again you can see I'm going
to be bringing it this way so there's my crisp outline here absolutely perfect slide this back so I just want a little
bit of overhang not very much then with my knife establish that
second knifewall into the vise you can see why these knifewalls are so
important to us as woodworkers with hand tools this one ok see my hands just resting on the top
guiding the chisel tip this one is my power and I just checked the heel of my
hand in here just a little bit it's not very hard it's not hard on your hand
this this time I'm going to go with just a beam of my square just to put a margin between me and my
fingertips with the knife I'm gonna run that right along just to
give me a little extra depth with my knife the safety with hand tools is very
critical, they are not anywhere near the same dangers with hand tools
that you get with machines but you still have to be conscious
that you're working with super sharp tools and the more you work with hand
tools the sharper your tools will probably get and here you know what you
can do this to deepen that is you could pop your chisel on here trying to use
the same measure of a hammer blow as you go because this does move that knife or
slightly just another method really you can go all the way down with this if you wanted to I want to recommend that you
deepen your cut with the knife over the saw from here ok take a lot of the waste here flick and then you can take the chisel
and go across the grain this way I'm going straight into that gauge line that
I made before I want to just use the heel of my hand and point upward
skywards and then a two handed, handhold like this is a technique we often use and
then short stabbing action like this aiming upwards not level bevel up not
bevel down taking out the bulk of the waste but not all of it same here this is much wider one here so
I'm reading the grain a little bit here because bit more awkward going at an angle like
this but not hard again shooting sky just a little bit I'll come in from the other
side in a minute and we'll clean up from that side to here be careful start on the long point which is
here move across this way, will give you a good start make sure you don't go
underneath this edge here same from this side now right into the marking gauge line just
go in a little bit just to give you a start then you can double up on your
hand hold again this keep shooting for sky this is pine so it's going fairly easily
bit mahogany works well, cherry, walnut if you
wanted a hardwood one or a more dense grain wood, I like pine because it has a
little yield to it so when you drive your wedges that they really bite well in
the pine what I'm going to do now is I'm going to
pull out this is the cordless router remember, and what I do is I set this to
those gauge line depths there this one's already says that's a little
bit tight there, we can always go deeper we just go shallow, go to your line and if
you need to go deeper there would be nothing wrong with that
so here I go across a little bit at a time working from side to side left to right, right to left now I'm looking at this and I'm not
quite fully to depth on this one corner here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take my knife and just chisel down along just cut down here just a little bit
really used to get the little extra depth that I need and then trace that along that knifewall one On pine it's a little bit more
difficult because you have the hard and soft aspect to the annual ring so it does tend to not give us cleaner, clean out of the bottom especially if it's set deep like this one I've left too
much wood on there so I'm just going to go in and remove some of the high rather
than strain the wood and strain the tool and then go back in and just take off
that top layer, final layer and now I'm going to go I'm going to set this just a hair
deeper just to clean up the surface gently not bulldozing this and try
not to go out this outside edge so i can come in from this face I don't have a
breakout on those unsupported fibers so much fun using a non power router
for this, you feel like you're in control you can see I don't have any jigs to
hold it, guide it and those are my recesses cut this was my 45
so this will go in here and either way it doesn't really matter just when I
come to my final cut for my 45 so this should now tighten up and then I Drive
that tight and then I would mark this on the underside with my knife which is
what I'm going to do, check it in this side make sure that the corners are
crisp it's a little bit of residue in here you can see I've got a nice crisp line
in here so I can turn this over now mark my exact length from here tap back, take my square like this, this stops tear really, hold in
this isn't quite so easy so I'm going to put it back to, at least cut some of it
this way I'm cutting just slightly past the end because I can
run the plane through here afterwards, and that will trim the end
up perfectly like that and then this one is my 90 these fibers do compress so even
though I had this before marked exactly on because the
compression inside the wood itself so you could use hardwood if you want to do
with this these will work just fine for you
absolutely fine you can't see what I'm doing here, can you,
this is just to establish the knifewall give it a little depth so the saw will
sit into that recess perfectly you can tap these passed and all we need to do now is,
I'm going to screw a block on the underside of here like this this is just going to be a stop that we
can anchor this into the Vise I'm going to use a drill feed the glue on here now, this is going to go here, you see this anchor in the vise so I'm going to glue this long grain to
long grain and now you can't screw this I'm on some of the ones I've made I just
glued it and then I screw through these recesses but I don't really like to do
that because for a variety of reasons really but I hate to think that I might
cut into the recess or do something else and it's going to be a screw there I'm gonna anchor this in the vise now give that glue time to dissipate put the clamps on here maybe two or three more in between and
then set it aside leave it to three hours and that will be
ready to work and we'll show you this in act I'm gonna leave that to dry just had my lunch and this is dried up
cured, and ready to go very simple project and one I think that
you will find a lot of use for this fits in here you can probably
see on this one when I push this to here it's about a
sixteenth from the edge and on this one it's a little bit more but when you
start tapping here it comes flush there's one thing that's not very apparent
is that on this edges is perfectly square to here, there's going to be a
step down here caused by this plane iron here is going to run a lot here so this
is one of the first things that we do we stand this on its side move that wheel
forward so we're taking a slice here keep moving this now until a little bit
more so every time I turn that wheel is advancing it and what it's done is it's
created this minute step down on here and that means that this now
this part here is registering against there and it won't take any more off
from here on so this is how we shoot using the shooting board I just set this flush with that new
rabbette that I just created and by 1 square of the end of a piece of wood
now I slide this on here and move it back because my wood is hitting against this
sacrificial piece here I get a nicely trimmed end grain there
and you may have to twiddle with your adjustment because you can't take too
much off using it a little bit less this is going to break on this edge and
once it does it will stop it won't do it anymore stop but what you can also do is you can
take your saw here and remove that corner and you can check this four square
you can see we're dead square and we're also square this way all right now, I might give you
another one they're going to do the 45 degree to show you how practical that
one is too you would use your miter box normally to
cut this a lot of times people misunderstand they think the miter boxes
were not very accurate and whereas they were not too accurate they were accurate
enough they didn't have to be too accurate, let me show you here so I'm going
to set this to 45 degrees and then check myself here for 45 this is just eyeball
so you can see I've got a two-degree discrepancy here which means I have a
two-degree discrepancy on here so this slides on here now and you can
see I just take it what I'm doing with my left thumb is I'm
just incrementally moving this forward in tiny not just till I start planning
this surface and this is now so smooth it's just wonderfully smooth so I slide
this here and then I move forward and I've got a very pristine crisp clean
edge here and I do the other piece to marry that one I got these lovely lovely shavings and
grain shavings and you can maybe see I put this perfect, absolutely
perfect as good as I can get from any chop saw or machine a miter the
difference between mine now is that is absolutely plain in a single plane so
this is when I look on this angry and I can see it's sparkling from the lighting
that's a shooting board that's all you need this is reversible tap bring it into
this and tap here so if you had a mould on this you'd be able to plane into the mould and it
would give you a crisp clean profile
