History of shooting boards

[Warren Mickley]

But Roubo was a woodworker, and he was very thourough in his writings. Hard to imagine that he skipped the shootingboard if it was used. And Paris was one of the hotbeds of fine furniture making in Europe before the french revolution.

The description from Nicholson is curious: "By this instrument the joints of panels for framing are made [...]". The PANELS. Not the rails of styles. I wonder why. Does he mean the edge joints for making wider panels?

Yes. In Nicholson's day "panels for framing" tended to be around 1/4 inch thick. Raised panels had sort of become a thing of the past. It is relatively easy to make drawer sides from 1/4 inch material without a shooting board, but making a good joint in thin stuff like this is hard because a slight difference from one side of the edge to the other will change the angle dramatically over a panel width of 16 inches or whatever. In the case of a harpsichord soundboard, you need quarter sawn material several feet wide and 1/8 (or less) thick. You can imagine he difficulty of jointing (and clamping) this material.

The routine use of a shooting board on end grain, to insure that the surface is square to the edge and square to the face of the board, is a relatively new idea. The shooting board used to be reserved for pieces that were excessively thin or short joints.

[Kees Heiden]

Thanks Warren.

[Stewie Simpson]

A shooting board and a bench hook are not that much different in design principal. Both use a rear fence to lock the board in position. I would imagine the earliest shooting boards used by craftsmen were principally just a bench hook with an additional fence tacked in place for planing end grain cut at predominantly 45 and 90*.

[Kees Heiden]

When your bench is flat you can still do that. Use one side for sawing, the other for shooting. The plane rides on the benchtop.

[Adam Cruea]

If we all bought stuff that we only needed and not wanted, I think we'd all still be sitting in a cave grunting to each other and making really smelly farts.

I was actually thinking about our first encounter when I posted and wondered "where's Hilton been?"

[Brian Ashton]

If we all bought stuff that we only needed and not wanted, I think we'd all still be sitting in a cave grunting to each other and making really smelly farts.

At least we don't grunt anymore.