Hand Tools

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. 

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.

The Stanley Tool company is legendary in hand tool circles...  It is their planes that a large majority of us woodworkers cut their teeth on.  They have been making the most popular line of woodworking planes since the late 1800's - at least until the quality of their product began to suffer after WWII, ultimately reaching their low point in the 60's and 70's where the level of quality has remained until today.  Yet there are so many examples of Stanley planes out there remaining from pre-WWII days still in use today that they are still setting the standard by which others are graded even to this day.  It wasn't limited to just bench planes either - one only has to look at Patrick Leach's pages on Stanley planes to see the breadth of their product line from the day.  The sheer extent of their product offerings is testament to their popularity.   Only recently have independent toolmakers - as a collective - even begun to breach a portion of it.