Homemade shooting board?

[Doug Polk]

Anyone have any plans for a simple shooting board for joining plate halves? Not interested in joiner plans, just a simple shooting board. Something went wrong with the only one I've made, so I want to see what you've done. Thanks!

[Brad Heinzen]

No plans, but here's a photo of what I'm using. There's a cleat on the underside so that I can clamp it in my front vise. It doesn't show up very well in the photo, but the most important feature of this shooting board is the tapered board that the stock sits on. The difference between using tapered shooting boards and flat ones is MUCH bigger than you might expect. With the tapered board, the wear on the plane blade is spread out a bit, and you can get perfect edges for gluing in literally a couple of minutes. Of course, the two halves are stacked up face to face for jointing, so that they glue up flat even if the edges are a bit out of square. Also, I don't use the shooting board itself as a reference for straight-lining - I let the plane do that part of the job, and the shooting board just holds the stock up where the plane can get to it. I find that a #6 plane works fine.

[Bruce Tillson]

Can someone explain what a "shooting board" is? Thanks

[Brad Heinzen]

In its simplest form, it's just a jig that holds stock up off the bench so that you can plane the edge. Some also have a registration notch for straight-lining, while others hold the stock at a fixed angle for planing miters. In this case, I'm talking about one that's specifically designed for cutting the glue joint between the two halves of an acoustic guitar top or back. I also made mine long enough to straight-line the sides. I use the plane on its side just as it's shown in the photo above.