Thread: Advice/suggestions for making a dedicated shooting plane

I have only made 2 planes and both wooden shooting planes. A number of years ago there was discussion about how low a bevel down blade angle you could go with a wooden plane so I figured if its a good solid hardwood then below 40* is doable. The blade edge needs some clearance angle so for a blade sharpened at 30* you can not go lower than 35* anyhow. I went about 38* on both. Guess I may have gone lower still but I was being practical rather than trying to break a record. They are both pretty crude but both work. The small one gets most use as I seldom shoot large pieces but it lacks heft for the bigger jobs. The big one is that size simply because I built it around a big old blade I had. I may have to build a two sided shooting board and see If I can use the other half of the blade edge. I used to use a stanley 5 1/2 but a wood plane does feel better on the hand than that for shooting. Both are single iron. I learned a few lessons and insights in the process.
Regards
John
Miter plane Mk2

Thanks Ian, I bought the "Bloodwood" from a local timber merchant because they suggested it would make good tool handles, being so hard. Part of the reason for making the proposed shooting plane from timber was that none of my steel bodied planes sides were square to the base but I am interested in your technique of adjusting as you go . Just read your miter plane thread Orraloon and most impressed. I will be using an old plane blade so mine will be biggish too.

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

.... but I am interested in your technique of adjusting as you go ...

It's very simple, and easier to demonstrate than describe. I take a few swipes and check both vertically & horizontally to see how it's coming along. If I see it's looking like the end is coming a bit off-square, I just lean a bit harder on the top of the plane in the direction required to correct any error. You only make a tiny difference, but over several cuts it can correct remarkably quickly. You can also correct in the horizontal direction by part-cutting the side that's too far 'out', but this is usually less of a problem, unless your stop is out of whack (in which case, you really ought to stop & fix it! ).

I do try to have all my blades cutting square, but it's nigh on impossible to have blade exposure absolutely perfect. Our manual training teacher made it look easy, but it did take me a bit lot of practice to get as good results as he could get. All he/we used was a bog-standard #4 or 5 for shooting, and later, when I did a lot of shooting for my own projects, it was a #5 that I turned to. They certainly aren't the best planes for the job, that's for sure, but you can make them work well enough if you have to.

I'm totally out of practice nowadays - a good cutoff blade and an accurate sliding table have spoiled me - I have no need to square up endless hand-sawn ends the way I once did. I know it's a bit "impure", and one day I'll get get that shooting plane done, and build a decent board to go with it, instead of the wonky, warped thing I pull out on the rare occasions I have to shoot an end....

Cheers,

The following shows 2 Shooting Board Planes I made;

The alternative to a skewed blade would be to make a ramped shooting board.
You can then use the plane on both right and left sides i required and might simply building.

A nice pair, Stewie!

I think if I were to make a wooden shooter, it would be very much along the same lines as Stewie's, solid, square and hefty. I'd probably face the sole with steel rather than brass if I were to use metal there at all. It's a nice refinement, but depending what wood you use, a wooden sole could serve many a year before it needed repair/replacement.

Notice where he's put the hand-stops so you can hold the planes right at the point where the blade is cutting. That's what I was burbling about before - I think it's a better solution than a handle, which is going to put your hand further away from where the rubber is hitting the road and be more likely to induce wobble & inconsistency as you plane..

Cheers,

I use an old wooden plane with my shooting board and find it somewhat uncomfortable. If I were to make one now I reckon it would be worth trying the "hot dog" style handle someone has shown on here a while back ( I think it was Derek but may be wrong).

The skewed blade would be an improvement too. Once the blade is fully engaged it doesn't make any difference as far as I can tell but it would make a significant difference to the initial contact.

As for

Originally Posted by IanW

one day I'll get get that shooting plane done,

At which time you will claim it's the last one you'll ever make and we'll all reply "Yeah right! "

Hi Planemaker. Two great examples and nicely photographed also. Do you prefer the handle just in front of the blade or the one just behind it? This has got me thinking Ian, about where to put mine. I'm hoping that wood will be sufficent as a bearing surface too, I'm not ready to step up to brass - even after reading your manual. Thanks also Labr@, sometimes it feels like I'm smashing into the end grain when I'm using my current set up #6 and "standard" shooting board.

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Do you prefer the handle just in front of the blade or the one just behind it?

I'd be interested in this too. I use a #5 for shooting, and find that when doing lots of trimming, my hand ends up very near the front of the plane such that the lower edge of my hand (hypothenar eminence) rests above the blade, but then that may just be because it's not a very comfortable plane to use on its side in the first place.

hi Mountain ash

my thoughts:
a shooting plane has two soles, the one the blade protrudes though and the side (sole) the plane rides on. If made from wood, there will be issues of seasonal warping that will need to be accounted for with the grain direction. Incorporating end grain boxing (or metal slides) in the side "sole" might (and I stress might) give you the wear resistance needed too accurately shoot at 90 degrees.
But then again, the wear resistance inserts might lead to excessive wear of your shooting board.

skewing the blade as per the metal Veritas shooting plane Veritas Shooting Plane - Lee Valley Tools would be my starting point for blade skew and bedding angle. But it might be a significant challenge to achieve a 12 degree bed angle and a 20 degree skew in a wooden plane.

do you wish to build a left and right pair?

wear on your shooting board could be alleviated by using something like the Veritas tracks Veritas Shooting Board Tracks - Lee Valley Tools

Folks, I think you're over-thinking things far too much! Wooden planes on wooden shoot-boards were used successfully for a very long time. Metal wear-strips are a nice refinement and not all that difficult to add - they only need to be in a couple of critical places, you would not need to face the entire sole if you felt that was beyond your capability. However, they are certainly not essential. Of course wooden soles & tracks wear, and will eventually need repair or replacement, but for the average weekend wood-warrior, that time will be very far in the future, most likely in the next lifetime or the one after that, unless you do a huge amount of shooting or choose a very non-durable wood for your plane or board.

One of the lessons I've learnt in this life is that no matter how much thought & effort I put into a tool the first time I make it, I can always do better 'next time'. I've made more than my share of complete duds over the years, but I reckon they taught me more than those that worked well from the start, so don't let the fear of failure paralyse you. My advice is to follow a proven design that you think is within your capabilities (or preferably, stretching them just a little ) and available materials. If you think a skewed blade is too hard (they're really not much harder than a straight bed when you get down to it), then go with a sloped-ramp board, which will give you almost the same effect, as hiroller has suggested.

With care & maybe a little luck, you'll get a useable tool straight off. Use it & refine it & get to know its strengths & weaknesses, then when you find its shortcomings are becoming really annoying, you will know just what you want to change on Vers 2.0. The journey can be just as interesting & satisfying as the destination.

Stewie has made one or two planes in his time, & I'd venture neither of the two shown above are his first......

Cheers,

Hi ian (from Canada). I hadn't thought of a LH and RH version. I am planning on only making one (RH). What are the advantages of both? I would have thought that I could just flip the board over as required. Does grain direction come into play? Surely the action of cutting end grain is difficult regardless. Or am I missing something obvious and highlighting my lack of experience?

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

Hi ian (from Canada). I hadn't thought of a LH and RH version. I am planning on only making one (RH). What are the advantages of both? I would have thought that I could just flip the board over as required. Does grain direction come into play? Surely the action of cutting end grain is difficult regardless. Or am I missing something obvious and highlighting my lack of experience?

There must be some situations where working the opposite way might be helpful, but I've not come across any yet, so I too would be interested to hear what I've been missing out on. Or maybe it's better I don't know because a LH version would be useless to me in any case, I'm so dominantly right-handed I'd be fumbling away & end up with the edge more out of square than when I started, or the board too short by the time I did manage to square it!

A 12 degree bed on a woodie is probably stretching the capabilities of the material too far, especially on a shooting plane that has to withstand some pretty severe forces at the business end. I'd stick with a bevel-down design unless you go with a metal body, and I'd recommend steel for the sole rather than brass if metal is your choice - the end of the bed gets awful thin with such a low-angle bed! I reckon you could drop the bed angle of a BD to 35 if you want a lower cutting angle. That would actually give you a lower cutting-angle than a 12 degree bed using a blade with a 30 degree bevel (12 + 30 = 42). However, assuming the same blade bevel on your BD plane, you will have only 5 degrees of clearance, which is an absolute minimum imo. You don't need quite as much clearance on end-grain, but you certainly need some.

I've only made about a half-dozen planes with skewed blades, two BD, like Steweie's shooters up above, the rest were low-angle BU shoulder-planes. What I've learnt so far is that you don't need a huge skew angle to be effective. I put 10 degrees on my panel plane (based on the few given angles I could find for old badger planes), and about the same on 15 degree bedded shoulder planes, which was just a guess as I couldn't find any good explanations or recommendations at the time.

Be aware that as you drop the angle of a skewed bed, the apparent angle of the skew on the sole increases, and you have to be even more careful to keep the bed accurate and get the angle of the blade to match closely, because you need to move the blade tang through an ever-increasing angle to alter the angle of the cutting edge relative to the sole. This is made more difficult with something like a shoulder plane because of the long, narrow wedge 'tunnel' that limits lateral movement of the tang. If you are a whiz at Euclidean geometry you can visualise this, but I found out empirically, when I ground the blade for my first skewed BU shoulder plane to "pretty close" & discovered it was certainly not "near enough". It had to be quite a bit closer to "perfect" because I didn't have enough lateral movement to correct even that slight deviation .

Those are details you don't really need to know when you start out, & why I recommend sticking with good, basic designs for your first plane or two. After that you can start being a bit more bold and pushing the boundaries. A bit of experience helps you when trying to diagnose what went wrong when your revolutionary new design turns out to be a lemon (damhik!) .....

Cheers,

As to the skew angle, my starting point would be about 10 degrees for a 40-45 deg. bevel-down blade

Ian, I wouldn’t do this.

It does depend on what you want to shoot. If it is end grain, such as drawer ends, then the best you could do (assuming a flat shooting board) is a low cutting angle and 20 degree skew.

In metal planes, only the Veritas Shooting Plane does this. The Stanley/LN #51 has the skew angle, but a 45 degree bed. This is such HUGE difference in edge longevity between the BU and BD planes. See my comparison here:

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ToolRev...tingPlane.html

Note that this was not due to differences in steels. I re-tested everything with PM-V11 in the LN as well, and the results were the same. It has to do with force vectors, and the lower the force, the less stress on the blade edge.

Low cutting angles can come from both BU and BD configurations. I made a wooden shooting plane with a 37 degree bed (used BD). The blade gets a 25 degree bevel, leaving 12 degrees clear.

For those interested in building it: http://www.inthewoodshop.com/ShopMad...lockPlane.html



Note that this plane is used on a ramped shooting board as it has a straight blade. Straight blade are best with a ramped board, and skewed blades can be used on either.

Regards from Perth

Derek