A Proper Miter Shooting Board

[Phil Gaudio]

You will recall from my earlier post that the miter shooting board did some things well and some things not so well. It was clear that I needed a different shooting board configuration: a donkey's ear. Here is the jig and the C/D samples: you can see how these parts will be fully supported throughout the cut. The dual fence design enables shooting from either direction. I think I am well fixed for shooting boards at the moment: and I should be able to shoot inside and outside miters on applied moldings with ease.

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[Derek Cohen]

Phil, the Donkey’s Ear looks good. It looks well thought out and beautifully constructed.

One piece of advice I have is that there is an inherent weakness in the design - it is a human weakness and not a build weakness, and it is not a criticism of you (in the least), but aimed at the tendency we have when we give our trust to machines and jigs.

I began making adjustable fences for shooting boards many years ago. Here is one made in 2008: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMad...g%20board.html





This is just one design. I came up with others. For years I built adjustability into the shooting boards I made.

Eventually it dawned on me that this was unnecessary. The correct technique would deal with any change in support behind the edge. The support can change all the time - shooting with a deeper blade projection will do this. The solution is that one adds a fine bevel to the rear of the edge to-be-planed, and plane this away. This is all that is needed, and when one does it, any dependency on the fence to prevent blow out will disappear.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Jim Koepke]

I recently received a new Veritas hand specific shooting plane that came out of the box with a paper note that said the plane was intentionally ground to less than 90 degrees. I found the note surprising to say the least, but looks like that is the way they are made.

Robert, there is an immense difference between a specification of tolerance in production and something being, "intentionally ground to less than 90 degrees."

If you read carefully it says, "We purposely ensure that our shooting plane is ground to 90° or less to a tolerance of 0.003".

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

I just received the Veritas donkeys ear a week ago. Time will tell how it fares. I want to make a dedicated board with the plane tilted at 45 to compare to the donkeys ear.

I couldn't find a donkey's ear on the Lee Valley site, can you post a link?

Another useful tool if one shoots a lot of miters, especially of moldings, is a miter jack.

Here are a couple >

https://www.benchcrafted.com/miterjack

https://redrosereproductions.com/miter-jack/

jtk