A shooting board is a simple but important jig to have in your woodworking arsenal. It allows you to use a hand plane to joint the edge of a board to 90 degrees very quickly and accurately. Its useful for tons of projects, but especially vital if you’re building acoustic guitars. If you’re working with figured wood and try to joint the boards on a powered jointer, there’s a good chance you’ll get some nasty tearout. That is why a shooting board is used. By jointing the boards by hand, you greatly reduce the chances of tearout in figured wood. Plus, who doesn’t need a good reason to break out the hand plane.

To build my shooting board, I’m using 3/4″ Birch plywood. I ripped the pieces down on the table saw to make both the base and the support for the boards. The base is about 4″ wider than the top. This creates a 4″ wide ledge for the hand plane to ride on. Then I aligned the to pieces on one edge and glued and screwed them into place. Next I used my router and a straight cutting bit to create a dado at one end. This is so I can install a small fence. The fence will act as a stop for the boards I’m jointing. I finished the shooting board off by sanding all the edges to remove splinters, and installing a toggle clamp at the end to help hold the boards in place.

This project really doesn’t take a lot of time to make, and if you get everything nice and square, will work great and serve you well for a long time. Its definitely worth taking the time to build a shooting board.

Check out the build video below.

Download the Bold Head Pad stl file here – Downloads

— Affiliate Links to Products Used —
Titebond 2 – Titebond 2 Wood Glue – https://amzn.to/3BV2dEG
Mirka Gold Sanding Discs – https://amzn.to/3JULdkB

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