Tool of the Month May 2016

Welcome to the May's Tool of the Month blog post!

This month it's the Shooting board plane!

The shooting board plane is a specialist tool used to square the edges and ends of pieces of timber.

Used with a jig called a 'shooting board' this tool can produce edges even more accurate and finer than a table saw can, which makes this hand tool ideal for fine furniture making!

This plane is made by a Canadian tool company called Veritas. It's design shows some pretty modern thinking with the blade set at a low cutting angle and also skewed at a slight angle, this is gives the plane more of a slicing action which is perfect for trimming endgrain.

It also offers some other handy features such as an adjustable handle, adjustable mouth and set screws to help set the blade more accurately.

A standard bench plane or low angle plane will work absolutely fine with a shooting board, but a dedicated plane can save a fair bit of time setting up... Plus it's shiny and very cool!
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The shooting plane and board in action, squaring up oak table components.

Thats it for May, look out for next month's post!