My design for a shooting board - comments/feedback?

[Tyler Anderson]

Hey all,

I'm just a beginner in woodworking. I was in need of a way to plane the long edges of some thin pieces, and, taking some ideas from suggestions given to me, made a shooting board with an adjustable side fence. The shooting board is made of melamine for the lower board, mdf for the upper board, and scrap pine for everything else.

The adjustable side fence is connected to a stationary side board by two long dowels with wingnuts, which allow for fairly fine lateral adjustments. This allows me to brace a long thin piece of wood along the cutting rail. I was happy with the support provided by the fence. I also threw in a couple wooden "clamps" to help hold whatever piece I'm working on in place. They're not meant to be very strong, but only to provide enough support so that the piece doesn't fall off the edge of the board.

I know there's plenty of room for improvement on this board, but it's the first I've done and would appreciate feedback/thoughts/suggestions.

--Tyler

[John Schreiber]

Tyler, That looks good. The important question is how does it work?

[Tyler Anderson]

It seems to work well. The adjustable fence holds the piece firmly and can be fine tuned. It's a little bit of a pain to adjust from a setting for a thin piece to a thick piece. I think what needs work now is my hand planing skills.

--Tyler

[Doug Shepard]

Looking good. Have you tried shooting without the holddowns tightened? I found on this one for beveled shooting that the sideways pressure from the plane was enough to keep the piece held in place, but had other reasons to skip the holddowns anyway.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=28304

[Tyler Anderson]

Doug - Yeah, the holddowns aren't really all that necessary, especially if I can touch the edge of the piece lightly with my fingers.

I encountered a problem tonight with the board after shooting a few more pieces of wood. The glue where those two dowels attach to the side fence eventually failed (well, the wood ripped out - it's pine). I guess I could either remake the fence out of a harder wood or figure out another method of attaching those dowels. I finished the piece I was shooting by just pressing the fence against the dowels where they should be glued, and that worked fine.

--Tyler

[Doug Shepard]

I cant really tell from the pics where the dowels are, but are they something you could replace with threaded inserts (or cross dowels) instead of dowels? Is this something that the threaded rod goes into?

[Tyler Anderson]

Sorry - when I said dowel, I was referring to the long metal threaded rods that allow for sideways adjustment. There's a nut glued to the end of it, which is (or was) in turn glued to the side fence. Both done with gorilla glue.

--Tyler