Build A Shooting Board - For Your Block Plane (WOW)

hi i'm rob cos and welcome to my shop if you've seen any of my videos you know how important my shooting board is what you may not have seen is the small one that i sometimes use with my block plane fits the bill when this one is too big we're going to build one stay with us i'm rob cosman and welcome to my shop we make it our job to help take your woodworking to the next level if you're new and you haven't subscribed please do so hit the notification bell so you'll receive alerts when we release a new video and anytime we use a special tool we'll always leave a description down below alright let's get to work as i mentioned this is my normal shooting board i use it constantly in fact i can't think of a time when i built something that i didn't use it however it takes up a lot of room on the bench so i'm constantly when i'm done taking it sliding it back in the slot bringing it back up it's made out of one-inch mdf it's nice and heavy accurate stays put designed to be used with my five and a half now there are times when i would prefer something a little smaller if i'm making small boxes it's much more convenient and it also allows me to have things just a little bit tighter so that's why i came up with this little mini shooting board to be used with my block plane you're making boxes like that and you've got really small pieces it's nice to be able to have the fence even closer and just everything in general is a lot closer a lot tighter so and i don't have nearly as long a stroke depth to take now i've redesigned this to make it a little more pleasing in terms of how it looks and that's what i want to walk you through is the process of putting this together and coming out with something that is nice and accurate for those small pieces and designed to be used with your block plane i whipped this one up out of need one night and i wasn't paying too much attention to the proportions and it turns out it's rather clunky i don't think we need three quarter for the base so i wanted to redesign it and make it a little more pleasing to look at and also good to use so the there's four pieces there is the base there's the top there's the fence and there's the cleat and you can use just about any material but there's a few that i think you need to pay particular attention to i prefer to use mdf on the bottom because it's nice and stable now i chose a piece of 5 8 you could go half i just thought three quarter was a little bit too big so i'm using 5 8. the dimensions are 12 inches in length 8 inches in width and then 5 8 of an inch in thickness now the top and this is where you want to use i think you want to use baltic birch or what's called russian plywood if you can get it the reason is all of the pieces are birch and one runs this way the next one runs that way if you buy the inexpensive stuff the core is sometimes nothing more than a weed would it just isn't going to wear well and that plane is going to run up against that edge over the life of the shooting board so you may as well make it nice and tough so that's quarter inch it is 12 inches in length as well but i got it cut back to six and a half inches in width you want to make a little area that the plane is going to run on and it needs to be at least as wide as the plane is tall i made mine a little bit wider third piece and i'm just use some scraps this happens to be bubinga this is going to be the cleat that goes underneath fastens on there like that to prevent this from moving forward when you're using it it wants to be the full width of the base piece which is eight inches i made this three quarters of an inch wide and three eighths of an inch in thickness and we'll fasten that underneath and then this piece is going to be your fence now your fence takes a fair bit of abuse because pieces get pounded into that just from the very nature of the way you use the shooting board so the harder the wood the better this piece i made again i just took it out of my scrap pile but it's inch and an eighth wide it is just under it's actually 11 16 thick and i want it to be almost the width of the top however i say almost i don't want to be touching that with the end of the plane so i pull it back here just a little bit and then my plane never actually cuts into it so those are the four pieces you can find them in your scrap bin usually but we're gonna go ahead and put all this together and make ourselves a wonderful little shooting board okay we got to get these pieces ready i prefer not to have saw marks so the only thing that really is critical in terms of being square is the front face that needs to be square to the bottom that's glued on here so we can do that it's nice to have a shooting board to do it but you don't so i'm gonna i'm going to flatten that bottom off i'll use my five and a half okay and then see if we can determine the grain direction i think it's going to go this way and we'll check that we've got to get it square and straight okay now that is high on this outside edge so i'm just going to check this and see if i all right i'm going to plane that so that it just takes off the high edge over here so i'm running the plane so it's flush with this edge you'll notice that the blade doesn't come all the way over here so if this side is low and this side is high this size remains untouched and we take down that high outside edge a couple of passes and then i'll do one complete one complete meaning i plane from side to side check that again okay that's square now we want it to be straight nothing worse than trying to hold a flat piece in there and that's not straight and your piece is wobbling it just you cannot do accurate work that way so what i'm going to do is i'm going to check the side of my plane first i'm going to mark this so that we know which one we're referencing okay i'd rather have it slightly concave than have a convex at all so that's good and i'm just going to put an arrow on here so i know which side is going to be the one that we're shooting against now just for the sake of cleaning it up we'll plane the top and we're playing that back edge and this as i said is just to get rid of saw marks okay so that one's ready to go this one just as long as it's close it's all that matters just get rid of straw marks again pull the blade in a little bit okay so those two are done now we've got to cut a little rabbit or rebate along here and the purpose of that is so when you're setting your plane on there that little part right here at the bottom runs below the blade so that your blades not cutting into the side of your of your top i want to make sure that this is nice and straight so i'm going to put that in the vise now we'll get a straight edge on that it's not pivoting so i'm going to say that that's good now i'm going to pick out what i think is the best face yeah it doesn't really matter it's actually got a little bit of a cup like that and that's what i want i need to explain this to you it's more apparent in a large shooting board when we make our shooting boards we actually build into it a slight cup this way if you're playing and because your shooting board is made out of two pieces and you've got a glue line in there throws a little bit of stress into it if your shooting board ends up like this what happens you want this to be square the minute that this ends up being slightly cupped and and i'm going to illustrate this by just putting something underneath here because what would happen because your plane is wide here narrowed here the minute there's a bit of a cup the plane tips this way and all of a sudden you're not square anymore so what i do is i make it so it's like this you're always resting on the widest spot and just the weight of using it you're going to push that flat but it's better to push it flat than to have it the other direction which you really can't do anything with it's frustrating if your shooting board ends up that way and because the block plane is the same situation wide in the middle narrowing the ends if that were to sit in a cupped area it would it would tip out as well just like that so we can't have it so what we'll do is we'll just put a couple strips of masking tape along here and then when we clamp it we'll clamp it to a solid surface and that'll have it just bow ever so slightly so when it dries it won't spring back and it'll keep that slight cup front to back but we've got to cut our little rabbit in here next so what i'm going to do is use you can do that on the table saw you can use a skew block plane you could use a rabbet plane you could use a shoulder plane i'm going to use my sku block plane simply because it's got a built-in fence and i'm just going to come in here [Music] now i'm going to cut through i'm going to cut down to about a little less than an eighth of an inch okay leave it right there now i'm going to take this over to a flat surface i just want to show you why i want to work with the material as it is instead of forcing something upon it so i'm going to set it on a flat surface and just see which way it's naturally cut make sure there's no debris on there so if i spin it like that it has a tendency to pivot in the middle if i turn it over and it pivots from the outside edges so i'm going to guess and say that this has a slight curve this way i'm just going to put an x on the side that we're going to glue to and then we already determined that on this piece if i flipped it over it spins in the middle so that has a cup like this may as well do the same thing which is what we did in cutting that rabbit there so we're going to glue these two pieces just like that we want a good surface to glue it to and i can may as well just use this table saw so i'm going to go get some tape and some glue we'll show you how we do that okay so first thing we're going to do is turn this over find the center and this is the automotive tape painters tape and it sticks a little bit better i'm going to put four layers i guess just guessing so based on how much that sticks up that'll work so that's going to sit right there this is the top side make sure there's no dust on the bottom side so that the glue sticks now we don't want that to slide around so once i put the glue on i'm going to tack put a couple of brads i'm going to start them actually right now and then i'll drive those home and that'll just keep it from shifting on me as we start clamping it i'm going to put a call here and one out here i'm going to put a piece of inch and a half by inch and a half on both ends and two clamps and i think that's going to apply enough pressure that that'll that'll get a good glue joint between those two pieces so with that done i'm going to go ahead and spread the glue on here and i've got a little trial a little tooth trowel that will just ensure that we have enough glue i'm using titebond 3 for no other reason then it just happens to be the glue i like the most thanks to my friend of med for sending me this handy little bottle now you want to make sure you have glue right out on the edges and i'm going to get close up here but not i don't want to have to go in and try to get glue out of that corner between the plywood and the mdf so i'll hold back about don't know an eighth of an inch or so i didn't put on as much as i thought i did that trowel needs to be cleaned out okay flip that over without getting it all over everywhere now we can trim this afterwards but i want to get that so that those two surfaces are flush now find a good pot we can clamp put that strip right there and this one right here put that piece right there and that one right there and this will certainly minimize the number of clamps required i don't think i need one in the middle i think the curvature will provide enough pressure that will do the job clamp that down okay now we'll give that 20 minutes 20-25 minutes to set up okay that's had enough time in the clamps now i'm gonna flush up this side by just using it on the table saw this one's already nice and clean so just take a small amount off [Music] [Music] so [Music] now i want to just clean this up a little bit before i put those cleats on it's a lot easier to do it now i'm using 150 grit with a piece of one inch mdf and a piece of felt just to uh that makes the sanding a little bit better than just having the sandpaper with a solid backing that's all it needs now a couple things to check i want to make sure that this is nice and straight so retract my blade put my longer plane in there and see the fact that well a second just to make sure that pivots and that can't do that so either i've got some oh there's a little piece of glue or something in there let's try that again okay that's good now we'll put this on first we've already marked it this is going to sit out like this and we want this to be square to here but what i find it's easier if you take a plane clamp the plane to this and then using a reliable square clamp the square to the plane clamp this fence to the square and then put a couple of clamps on here to hold that everything all in place we'll come back after the fact and we'll put a couple of screws up through the bottom to hold this securely i can't i don't want to rely on just glue alone i want some mechanical fasteners but you don't want just mechanical fasteners without glue because there's always a tendency for that to creep just a little bit so i want to set this up at the end of the bench so that i can get okay this part has to be precise shooting board isn't square now you can always fix it if you have to but better to get it right the first time so i've got this set up the first thing i want to do is clamp this plane tight make sure it's tight against this part of the shooting board nice to have an array of clamps okay so that won't move now i'd like to have the fence pulled back from the edge i'll explain why when we actually use this and that's about that's probably far enough for this small of a of a shooting board so now we're going to go in here and make sure that that square is held tight to the sole get out of there of the plane now we're going to come in we're going to clamp this like that and then we're going to put a clamp here and a clamp there i'm going to purposely keep the end of the shooting board back from the edge of the from the surface of the plane so i don't want to be there i'll go right about there and then these two clamps will hold it so let's put some glue on there remember we're going to come in and reinforce this with screws from the bottom side but we need the glue to don't want a whole lot simply because i don't want glue squeezing out the front if you want in fact we'll do this we're going we're just going to cut a little chamfer not too deep because if you're doing really thin stock you don't want to fall into there just enough to help keep debris from getting right into that corner now i'm just going to spread this real quickly i'm staying away from that front edge best glue spreader you'll ever find remember hold that back if you want to you could even put a couple pieces of paper in there just to now this is going to have a tendency to to lift up so just put enough pressure on there to hold that and here clamp that down and we can get one in there or not okay so we'll give that 20 minutes and then we'll be able to go and screw that without having to worry about that moving if you try to screw and glue at the same time it almost always has a tendency to want to creep now put this cleat on the underside and remember we're going to reinforce that with screws as well now i don't mind some squeeze out on the ends and on the front side but if i have it on the inside then i gotta go and scrape it off so i'll just come in there with my thumb that's a bit heavy get that flush on the ends as close as i can to being flush in the front and just hold that for a second and it'll tack a little bit and then when i put the clamps on won't have such a tendency to squirm we're also going to knock all these corners off with the block plane just so that it's a little more comfortable when you're carrying it and moving it around ah moved a little bit try it this way flush okay we'll give that a few minutes to dry and then we'll come in and put the screws on both the fence and the cleat now i'm using number six screws and i'm gonna put four in there just for the because that takes a fair bit of abuse banging against the edge of your bench this one because it's going through just the or into the 5 8 ply is going to be three quarter and the others will be one inch so i'm going to divide this up i'm going to come in a half an inch from either end with one that leaves me seven inches we'll divide that by three it'd be about two and five sixteenths so one here and one here so i've got my countersink set for the first one which is the shorter of the two [Music] the bingo is hard in fact it's also brittle so what i need to do is counter bore through the bubinga with a drill bit that's the same size as the outside diameter right at the thread if you don't i find that it's a great tendency to split no i didn't get that i didn't get that countersunk deep enough and that started to slip on the drill okay okay so on these ones i'm gonna go four as well so i'm gonna because i'm drilling into the into the uh the bubinga i'm gonna come in a little bit closer so i'm gonna come in three quarter so let's just write this down we're gonna and from the end we'll go the first one will be three quarter uh the final one will go five and three quarter and so if we're here and we're here that leaves us five in the middle divide that by three inch and a half an inch and a half an inch and half's four and a half so let's go inch and five eighths so if we come in the inch and five eighths let's draw a light line across there so we're at three quarter two and three eighths four and an eighths and five and three quarter now for this one we're going to go down an inch and a quarter that'll give us get us into the that'll get us into the bubinga but i'm going to set the i'm going to set the uh that one's too big i'm going to set the bit to go a little bit deeper sometimes the bang is really susceptible to splitting and if we go the full depth with that i'm afraid it's just not why the countersink's not going to be wide and wide enough to prevent that from splitting so we've got a little bit of room i'll go a little bit longer you want to make sure the countersinks are deep enough that the head of the screws sit below the surface you don't want them scratching your bench so okay now we got to flush that up we got to flush these up i'm going to go back over to the belt sander we could also do that with a plane if we had to clean up those surfaces and we'll come back we'll cut our chamfers on some of these surfaces not all of them i'll show you what i mean and then we'll brand it and the last thing to do is just to spray a finish on it now anywhere you're going to touch this you want to ease off those corners i'm going to just take a little bit off of here yeah but other than that i'll do i'm just using a little squirrel tail to that corner that one now to get along this long one i'm just going to come in here sideways and then skew it around i can't do much on that one you could do it with some sandpaper if you wanted do this one [Music] this long one it's tricky because you have a tendency to blow off either the plywood or the bubinga better done with a block plane okay so that's all the corners make sure we don't have any glue sticking out here which would interfere with the board when we're trimming it oh well now it definitely needs to have a coat of spray on it because mdf is so susceptible to moisture damage so i'm gonna i just use a lacquer two or three coats and works great but i'm not going to bother waiting to do that now when i'm going to get my plane get a piece of wood and we'll test this just to make sure it works the way we want we recently did a couple of videos on spraying one using a spray can the other using an hvlp so we'll leave a link below if you want some help on that so if i wanted to plane the end of this holley first thing i would need to do is to flip it over cut a little chamfer a little more blade a little chamfer on the end to avoid having that tear out when you cross the end flip it over [Music] and that works great just the size is perfect for doing small stuff like that so there you go a block plane size shooting board if you like my work if you like my style of teaching click on any one of these videos to help take your woodworking to the next level and i've always said better tools make it a whole lot easier if you click on the icon with the plain and the chisel it'll take you to our website introduce you all of our tools and also talk to you about our online and in-person workshops good luck in your woodwork

Channel: RobCosman.com

Views: 58,871

Rating: 4.9668703 out of 5

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Id: IVrKjjjZ50M

Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 24 2020