I am finally getting around to unpacking the garage^Wwoodshop after my move two years ago. I felt like I want o go totally neander making my new bed since a) I'm not on a schedule and B) since it's a platform bed, everything will potentially be covered in blankets.

To this end, the first thing I decided to make was a shooting board. The kind with a big rabbet on the side. I figured I'd pick on doug fir, since this is california.

No worries, I'll just bust out my shiny LN 10-1/4 to cut the shelf. Just like Roy. Two problems immediately become apparent.

1) I'm only getting the plane cutting right in the middle of the blade on a flat board, which means my blade is crowned, right? Which is bad on a rabbet plane, right?

2) How on earth do you get the blade out? Maybe I have the frog too far forward, but I eventually had to remove the chip breaker and drop the whole assembly out through the throat. Is this pretty standard?

How tight do you really need the mouth on a rebate plane? Just the regular "tight enough nothing tears out"?

-Matthew (who is discovering that not only must the fence on a shooting board be perpendicular to the groove, but the groove bottom and the bed need to be exactly co-planar (DAMHIKT)).