What is "shooting board"

Shooting \Shoot"ing\, a. Of or pertaining to shooting; for shooting; darting. Shooting board (Joinery), a fixture used in planing or shooting the edge of a board, by means of which the plane is guided and the board held true. Shooting box, a small house in the country for use in the shooting season. --Prof. Wilson. Shooting gallery, a range, usually covered, with targets for practice with firearms. Shooting iron, a firearm. [Slang, U.S.] Shooting star.

1. (Astron.) A starlike, luminous meteor, that, appearing suddenly, darts quickly across some portion of the sky, and then as suddenly disappears, leaving sometimes, for a few seconds, a luminous train, -- called also falling star.

   Note: Shooting stars are small cosmical bodies which encounter the earth in its annual revolution, and which become visible by coming with planetary velocity into the upper regions of the atmosphere. At certain periods, as on the 13th of November and 10th of August, they appear for a few hours in great numbers, apparently diverging from some point in the heavens, such displays being known as meteoric showers, or star showers. These bodies, before encountering the earth, were moving in orbits closely allied to the orbits of comets. See Leonids, Perseids.

2. (Bot.) The American cowslip ( Dodecatheon Meadia). See under Cowslip.

   Shooting stick (Print.), a tapering piece of wood or iron, used by printers to drive up the quoins in the chase.
   --Hansard.

A shooting board is a jig for woodworking which is used in combination with a hand plane to trim and square up the edges and ends of boards. It would typically be used on a workbench.

There are two specific purposes to which shooting boards are applied: jointing and end grain trimming. The design of the shooting board remains fundamentally the same in both cases but the length of the board will vary - with the boards used for jointing being much longer than those intended for end grain trimming.

A shooting board consists of a flat board, the base, with a stop at one end, similar to a bench hook, on which the board to be planed is rested. The stop prevents the board from sliding as it is planed.

Parallel to the base and slightly lower is a secondary surface, the fence, which may be a separate board, or may be a rebate cut into the base. The difference in height between the base and the fence is to allow for the offset of the blade in the hand plane.

The purpose of the fence is to guide the plane along the edge of the board being planed such that the blade in the plane is presented at 90 degrees to the base of the shooting board. Assuming that the sides of the hand plane being used are perpendicular to the sole, this ensures an edge that is at 90 degrees to the face of the board.

For end grain trimming, the board is placed on the shooting board so that an edge adjacent to the end to be trimmed is hard against the stop. The woodworker will usually have scribed a line on the end to indicate how far to trim the board. The hand plane is rested on its side on the fence and held firmly against the end of the board whilst being pushed along its length. Jointing is performed the same way except that the board is oriented so that one end is against the stop and the edge to be jointed faces the fence.

One problem faced when using shooting boards repetitively is that the blade in the hand plane becomes worn very quickly in one spot. This requires frequent sharpening to ensure smooth and accurate cutting. The ramped shooting board addresses this problem by introducing a slope to the fence. As the hand plane moves along the fence, the slope causes the part of the blade in contact with the board to move along the blade's length. This even exposure of wood along the whole blade allows a longer blade life, as sharpening is less frequent.

Shooting boards can be made in various sizes and shapes to accommodate different tasks and it would not be uncommon to find a number of them in the workshop. One accessory that may be fitted to a shooting board is an angled stop, most commonly at 45 degrees. This allows mitres to be trimmed.