My old shooting board has been pretty trusty over the years.
Added note: The blue tape was added to adjust the angle when there was a little bit of movement from weather or what ever else may have been the cause.
Old Shooting Board.jpg
Lately I decided I wanted to rework it into an ambidextrous shooting board. I also wanted to make the platform lower to get more of the blade into action. The old platform was a piece of 3/4" thick material. The new platform is just a hair under 1/2" in thickness.
The old shooting board was disassembled. It was easy since nothing was glued. I decided to make a new 'hook' out of a piece of scrap left over from making a tile topped table recently. The piece was ripped so it was shallow enough to fit in either of my vises.
New 'Hook'.jpg
The fence was made from a piece of the old hook. If you want to avoid unwanted holes in your bench either use plenty of scrap under your work or check the depth of your drill:
Check Drill Depth.jpg
A square is also used here to make sure everything is square.
The fence was made to be a bit proud of the platform and was chamfered on the back side.
Next a piece of scrap is tried and checked while trimming the fence:
Fence Trimming.jpg
This is done on both sides.
A wedge at about 17º was cut to the same height as the fence to chamfer the bottom of some legs for another tile topped table:
Using a Wedge.jpg It finally loaded!
The wedge is held in place with tape so it can be moved out of the way.
This was used to chamfer around the bottom of the leg. I count the strokes to keep it even. Then the wedge is flipped up so the bottom can be shot square:
Wedge Hinged Up.jpg
The top of the leg is marked for center from the corners and the sides and then worked using the wedge to make a pyramid top:
Pyramid Top Finished.jpg
Just for fun the leg was stood up on the table and checked with a square:
Stand Up.jpg
Sure to get a few more years out of this one.
jtk
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