Ive tried cutting dovetails. Endlessly. And my skills improved. but usually not enough for a box I’d want to give away.
So I started cutting miters. Then made a donkeys ear to clean them up.
Ive used several planes to shoot these miters. Sometimes it goes well. Often it’s arduous and I finish a day w/ some impressive tear out and a blister on my palm.
So I looked at specific shooting planes. I’d like to say that the Veritas never even made it to my cart, but it did. Thankfully it occurred to me that I can only shoot w/ it in one direction, and couldn’t reverse it to use w/ the other hand.
And so fell down the sharpening rabbit hole. Which had me spending too much time wondering about angles of an edge.
And then, I started looking at low angle bevel up planes. Some eBay auctions didn’t go my way and I ended up buying a modern Stanley #62.
It arrived and looked fine, though the mouth didn’t adjust as it should. Since the threaded insert was stripped out. Some epoxy fixed that easy enough. certainly faster than sending the plane back and replacing it would have.
It’s square and (now) plenty sharp.
And I’ll be damned…. This thing is an absolute treat for shooting endgrain. It’s not like I didn’t believe all the folks that said the same thing, but I didn’t believe it would matter so much.
Much much less tear out. Clean edges. Smoother cuts.
It’s a treat to use.
-PD