Shooting board

[Basilg]

I have decided that my shooting board needs replacing. I would usually lean towards manufactured boards for their stability, & I am also considering using UHMW plastic where the plane runs to reduce friction.

Has anyone used the latter ? & have you found it worthwhile ?

Regards

[Woodwould]

My shooting boards are made from MDF purely because it's fairly stable stuff and I know they won't require constant checking and/or adjusting. I rub a wax candle on the plane slide and that makes it quite slippery enough.

[Horaldic]

Mine are made from the hardwood scraps I had hanging about at the time. Mostly Tas oak. I gave them a couple of coats of BLO followed by furniture wax. I check the angles before each use and adjust if necessary (hardly ever really).

I have this big lump of machinists wax that I wipe on my planes and stick troublesome screws into to lube them. I have been thinking of putting a slice of breadboard plastic along the harder wearing portion of one of my shooting boards and might try it next when one needs a refurb.

I bought a couple of the long caterers boards to harvest the plastic off several years ago and have only used half of one of them.

[wattycoo]

Basilg, my shooting board is made from MDF with hardwood fence and UHMW tape (from Lee Valley) on the plane runway, plane runs beautiful and smooth for several years now, Ross.

[munruben]

MDF is a good choice in my opinion.

[ac445ab]

Ciao,
Mine is made of lamellar beech. The wood is well squared and pleasant to see and it should result more stable than solid wood.


Giuliano

[Basilg]

Thank you all.

I currently have a board made from MDF with a Kwila fence and the runway I wax as WW recommends. It has served me well but is starting to show its age a bit ( some may say that suits me ). I have decided to make a new one with all the wizygigs for shooting mitres, but before finalising the design I particularly wanted to find out more about UHMW. I did see the tape on the LV site but thought it may need replacing from time to time, and a solid runway may be better for only a few dollars more. I think MDF is fine to use as a shooting board but I must admit to a temptation for having things in the workshop 'Just So', and suffer from accepting temptation to include a nice piece of wood in something like this. The final result may well finish up in Tas Oak to match the workbench, but then I may not be able to find it on the bench top so perhaps New Guinea Rosewood.

I would be interested to learn more about peoples experience in using UHMW

Regards

[Woodwould]

How would the thin UHMW be attached? I wasn't aware it could be glued and screwing it down would certainly distort it. Just how slippery do you want the board?

Be aware (of the ones I've seen), the cheap plastic cutting boards are polyethylene and not UHMW. Polyethylene would be no slicker than waxed MDF. If you're going to use plastic, I would purchase it from a reputable source.

[Basilg]

How would the thin UHMW be attached? I wasn't aware it could be glued and screwing it down would certainly distort it. Just how slippery do you want the board?

Be aware (of the ones I've seen), the cheap plastic cutting boards are polyethylene and not UHMW. Polyethylene would be no slicker than waxed MDF. If you're going to use plastic, I would purchase it from a reputable source.

WW

In essence you have gang hit, my questions and the reasons I asked for peoples feedback.

I did see one comment ( can't recall where ) that it could be glued, but required one side to be torched to make the surface rough which did not appeal to me. I was thinking of drilling & tapping the UHMW and fixing from the underside of a substrate, which I agree may cause some distortion, but if done carefully and the UHMW & substrate is manufactured well should be OK.
this of course leads to the question which is likely going through your mind ' is it all worthwhile ' & how slippery is it ?

I wonder if anyone has determined the Coefficient of Friction for waxed MDF and UHMW?

I did note that Tico Vogt is using UHMW on the shooting boards he is selling.

Regards

[Woodwould]

It sounds like an awful lot of bother for little or no noticeable gain.

[wattycoo]

I used the tape after reading about it somwhere on the net. I haven't replaced it in 2 or more years, the plane runs nicely on it. I can't imagine it is significantly different to a nicely waxed board. I used the tape because it was easy to attach but I guess it is all pretty peripheral to the main game of building a good board, Ross

[IanW]

It sounds like an awful lot of bother for little or no noticeable gain.

Agreed.

Shooting boards are a 'consumable', in my view of the world. It takes many years of 'normal' use to wear one out. In my shed the shooting board comes out a few times a month, at most. My current board is made from scraps of Vic. Ash, because that's what my eye fell on when it was time to make it. But I would have used anything that was stable enough & large enough & not earmarked for something more important....

I also think that a bit of wax is just as good as, & a heck of a lot simpler than mucking about with plastic slip-strips. I'm fortunate to have had accesss to paraffin wax used for embedding tissues for microscopy. Every month or so, the stuff in the machines gets chucked out & replaced. One chuck-out is two lifetimes' supply of wax. It's brilliant stuff - doesn't build or clag up the way beeswax does. I keep a lump at each end of the bench, and give the soles of my planes a swipe or three every few minutes when doing heavy planing. Doesn't hurt to swipe saw blades occasionally, either. Candle wax is usually good, as long as they contain mostly paraffin wax (& I think the cheaper the better in this respect!).

As a matter of interest, the UHMW plastic seems to stick with ordinary contact cement (the solvent-based stuff sticks ok & the water-cleanup stuff hardly at all, in my experience). I picked up several strips of it about 90mm wide & 3mm thick off the the bottom of a large packing crate (presumably, to make it easier to slide around). The glue used looked like contact cement, and the strips were well stuck on, so that's what I tried when I used some of it on a couple of zero clearance inserts for my table saw. The extra 'slipperyness' doesn't hurt, but more importantly at the time, it was precisely the right thickness to add to the ply I was using, for a perfect fit in the saw throat..

Cheers,

[jimbur]

Ian, I know we put a bit of ourselves into everything we make. I hope you aren't putting bits of other people
cheers,
Jim

[Pops]

Hi Basilg,

I believe that UHMWPE has a coefficient of friction not that much less than Teflon, so it is fairly slippery. However it is a bit soft for my liking compared to MDF or timber and am inclined to agree with IanW, seems a bit of an effort.

I do not know the coeficient of expansion of the stuff but wonder about movement with high temperatures in the shed.

Let us know what you decide and post a picture of the new shooting board.

Cheers
Pops

[Mr Brush]

I bought a roll of this stuff to use on my tablesaw fence

Slippery (Low-Friction) Tape - Lee Valley Tools

There's enough left on the roll to make several shooting boards with - I'd apply the tape directly to an MDF ramp.