If I were to know I was going to be stranded on a desert island, or marooned anywhere, I would wish for a Jack Plane. If I could get any Jack Plane, I’d want the one I find most versatile, A Low Angle Jack Plane. In fact, I have said my favorite plane on a shooting board is a Low Angle Jack Plane.

The 62 was originally introduced by Stanley and has been repopularized and made better than ever by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, redesigned and reissued by Stanley Tools, and is also part of Woodcraft’s Wood River line in recent times. We now offer a Chute-Style Shooting board for the Number 62 Low Angle Jack Plane.

The 62 Shooter™

Some of the cool things about LA Jacks on the shooting board is that it has heft, much like the LN-51 and Veritas SP, but it is also ambidextrous, which makes it a great choice for woodworkers who favor either the right or left hand.

When shooting moldings, The LA Jacks excel, because since you’ll have to shoot each side of any molding in situ, the LA Jack is easy to use in a twin-chute, left and right shooting board, and all that is needed is to flip it over from side to side as you use it in each respective chute.

The other great thing about the LA Jack is how it handles in the cut. It is not a skewed blade, but it is presented to the cut at 37 degrees. The low angle cuts cross grain easier and leaves a smoother finish.

It doesn’t end there. LA Jacks are affordable planes that are veritable workhorses in the woodworking shop. It dosen’t matter if you favor hand tools or work wood in a hybrid way with power tools, this is a plane that can bring it for anyone. Depending on the blade you install, this plane is capable of being used as a traditional jack plane, a short jointer, even a panel smoother. Shooting Board Plane is just another job description on it’s resume.

With high bevel angle blades installed such as a 38 or 50 degree blade, and the adjustable mouth this plane can approach difficult grain and reduce or eliminate tearout with a 62 degree final angle.

No other hand plane in the shop has as much versatility. No plane is be all end all, but this is a plane that is useful and can earn it’s keep in any shop. You may even want to keep one in your suitcase along with a ryoba saw when traveling – just in case… Many of our shooting boards will fit in a suitcase as well, and if a bottle of glue is along for the trip, that is a tool kit that can accomplish a lot!

Now we offer our shooting boards, allowing the 62 LA Jack to ride in an enclosed “Chute” just like the LN-51 Chute Board Plane. All the fence angles we offer are available. The added bonus is, the Number 62 LA Jack does not know if it is left or right handed, because it is both handed and then some! Just use it as you see fit!

You can order the 62 Shooter™ in the Evenfall Studios Woodworks Store, and while you are there, please look in on our New Products page as well!

Please remember to subscribe to our Blog, we offer both RSS and email feeds at the top of every blog page!

For much more frequent woodworking thought for your consideration, please follow our Twitter Feed:

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We enjoy your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions! Please Contact Us.

Thanks for visiting Evenfall Studios!

© Copyright 2014 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

Over the past several years I have received many inquiries regarding woodworking methods that are difficult to make safe. Believe me, being very fond of my fingers and their daily health is always in the forefront of my mind as a full time toolmaker.

Some of the most common questions have been regarding working with short lengths of stock, and thin stock. Both of these sizes of wood not only commonly put our fingers in the near vicinity of rotating cutters on many different power tools and shop machines, but are also such that the power tool or shop machine can grab them and remove control from the operator.

Short pieces are difficult on any saw with a rotating blade. There is a lot of horsepower and momentum being transferred from the blade to the wood. Sometimes the friction of moving the wood into the blade is a factor as well. With the fingers in close proximity to the blade it’s difficult to be safe when working with small material.

Routers share many of the same difficulties regardless of the shape of the bit. All it takes is for friction or the cutter to overcome your grip on the stock and danger can become immediate.

Accuracy can be a factor here as well. It is difficult to get accurate cuts on small pieces because of the difficulty in controlling them under the cutter. Cutter harmonics and oscillations can also affect accurate cuts, and on work that requires close inspection, this is more often than not less than desirable.

Jointers and planers also have difficulty with short or thin stock. Rotating cutter heads can get traction on the work piece and pull it from your fingers leaving your fingers in close proximity to the blades. Other times the stock is too thin to dampen vibrations caused by the cutter, leaving a chattered surface. On short pieces there’s not enough stock to bridge the cutter in the first place, and this is true not only between jointer tables but a problem between the rollers of the planer head as well.

Thin and short stock is commonly used in a number of different woodworking projects. Consider jewelry boxes, veneering, parquetry, framing and other molding work just to name a few. So what’s the safest way to work with small wood pieces that will consistently bring the best results? In our mind it’s a shooting board.

We offer a number of solutions for this problem depending on the requirement. Many of our shooting boards offer from two to eight fully calibratable angles for truing end or long grain. We also offer longer shooting boards such as our Wide Board, Or Long Grain Shooter for jointing edges around the 18 to 24 inch range.

For molding applications, we offer shooting boards with twin chutes to address different angles on either side of a molding as based on its application.

Accuracy isn’t an issue here. The chutes are straight and coplanar to the top to within 0.001 inch. The fence is made just as straight and square, and can be user zeroed to the perfect angle ± 3° at every mounting point. This holds true for any season, and compensates for any wood movement, for accuracy 24/7/365. Similar angular accuracy can be set using our Any Angle Fence, at any usable angle between zero and 90°, so true creativity can be brought to bear.

The planing stop accessory can be exchanged for the fence that provides the capability to thickness stock between the 1/16th and 1/8 inch range, without fear of damage to the plane iron.

Safety is inherent in the system. While the plane iron must be extremely sharp, it is housed in the body of the plane and protrudes no more than 0.001-2 inch. And the woodworker supplies the power behind the cut, assuring control over the process, and the safety of the operator.

No matter the size of stock, the shooting board offers the highest level of accuracy and cut quality provided by woodworking tools. The added safety of using one is inherent in every cut made.

Whether you work wood as a professional or amateur, year-round or seasonally, A shooting board can dramatically increase production, quality and safety while providing the desired results. Safety and more of it is something we all can use in our shop every day!

You gotta love a shooting board. It’s a gateway tool that brings both perfection, machinist-like accuracy and safety to every endeavor. It can take a lot of difficult tasks and make them easy. It can take a lot of unsafe tasks attempted on machines and render them safe. It’s a tool that will make you good, and if you’re good it will make you better. They have application in all aspects of board-prep, layout, joinery, finish and artistry.

They’re quiet, and help prevent wasting expensive woods. You can use it with a simple block plane, or a top-of-the-line shooting board plane, and nearly any other bench plane in between. They are easy to use with a little practice, and it’s a great tool to use if you’re new to woodworking or with young people, because it provides excellent results that we can learn from and become better. Everybody loves the feel-good feeling of success.

If there are woodworking projects you have considered but shy away from due to difficulty or safety concerns, consider trying them with a shooting board. Most any handplane you have will probably work suitably, and all it needs is a sharp iron.

When it’s absolutely got to be right, you might want to reach for the shooting board. If you find yourself considering a shooting board and accessories for your shop, please follow this link to the Woodworks Store.

Please remember to subscribe to our Blog, we offer both RSS and email feeds at the top of every blog page!

For much more frequent woodworking thought for your consideration, please follow our Twitter Feed:

Follow @evenfallstudios

We enjoy your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions! Please Contact Us.

Thanks for visiting Evenfall Studios!

© Copyright 2014 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

The 2014-2015 woodworking season is upon us, And we wanted to share a bit about what’s new here with everyone!

We have recently released a Sharpening Station System called the Magstrop™. It offers the ability to sharpen quickly and easily, using horse butt and suede leather strops, as well as glass platens for use with sandpaper’s from very coarse to microfine grits. The Magstrop sharpening system is expandable, and we have future plans for that but for now I’ll just say there is more coming soon.

We developed the Magstrop with several desires in mind…

We wanted to be able to remove as many of the barriers and difficulties to sharpening as we could. These sharpening stations offer the ability to utilize a wide variety of abrasives over a wide range of grits.

We wanted the ability to address the sharpening needs of most any type of steel on most woodworking tools, knives, and tools that can be sharpened using stone and strop methods.

We wanted portability and the ability to configure the station for the way we need to address our specific sharpening task, quickly and easily.

We wanted a sharpening station that would be quick and easy to use, with a small footprint that doesn’t take up a lot of space. A dry sharpening system that can provide accurate sharpening with little mess.

Now we can go back and forth. We can plane or chisel a little until we feel our tool beginning to dull, and we can easily turn to a sharpening station, and strop a bit to restore that cutting edge and get right back to the woodwork without a lot of mess.

I feel we accomplished that, whether sharpening station that facilitates keeping edges sharp with very little work. Is a great fit for most any tool in our shops, and does a great job for the knives in our kitchens as well!

Remember, keeping the edge sharp takes very little work.

You can find our Magstrop sharpening stations in the Sharpening Section of our website store, or by going to www.magstrop.com

We have also recently released some new shooting board models. The Ultra Plus, offering eight fixturable fence positions having fully calibratable accuracy. The Wide Board Shooter, offering the capability of shooting boards to the 18 inch wide range. It comes in three different single chute models, and three double chute models. Any of those models can be offered for use with Kanna as well.

You can use our shooting boards with anything from an LA Block plane to a custom Infill Miter plane, and most any bench plane in between. All our shooting board models offer the option of an enclosed chute. Our Chute Board models work with The Lie-Nielsen LN-51 Chute Board Plane, and LN-9 Iron Miter Plane. The Veritas Shooting Plane, and LA Jack plane, and any manufacturers model 62 LA Jack plane.

So if you have been waiting for a Chute Board or Shooting Board Plane, you may now already have one. Our shooting boards now provide the ability to run these bench planes in a chute. The upside to using the LA Jack and Iron Miter planes is that they are ambidextrous. This is very important on twin chute shooting boards when shooting moldings.

Our Long Grain Shooter is also configurable for use with any of our Chute Adapters. So all the aforementioned bench planes work here as well.

Woodworking safety is improved as well. Shooting boards are safe for use on thin stock, short stock, odd shaped stock. Shooting veneer is no problem, and our boards offer the capability of shooting end grain or jointing edge grain to the 24 inch range. We also offer a planing stop that will allow thicknessing in the 1/8 to 1/4 inch thickness range.

All our shooting boards currently come predrilled for using chute adapters. If you would like to upgrade a shooting board we made prior to the use of chute adapters, it is completely upgradable and can be retrofitted. You can also purchase a shooting board without chute adapters today, and upgrade to using adapters at a future time. If you have any questions about how this works, Please contact us!

Our Shooting Board Index

Our Bench Hooks continue to be popular. They offer any angle sawing capability with improved ergonomics. They can be used with either Japanese or Western style handsaws. They are commonly much faster and easier to use than a miter box, and also offer replaceable wear surfaces.

To augment their accuracy, We also offer two different sizes of our Handsaw Mag Guides. These have been upgraded to be more low-profile than ever before. We have eliminated the lower nut assembly on the pivot rod, allowing for increased usability.

Many woods are expensive, and grain matching is always unique. Sometimes the cut has to be absolutely right, and there’s only one shot at it. These Mag Guides are not meant to limit you. They can be set accurately to most any required angle, while holding 90 degrees for the cut. They include relief space for aggressive saw tooth set, and are excellent for helping develop your skill as an accurate sawyer.

Our Handsaw Accessories Index

Woodworking season is almost here. Our tools are custom made in a one-man shop, by hand and eye. Many of the tools we offer are designed to help the tools you already own, perform at peak performance and accuracy, while transparently assisting you with your craftsmanship at any skill level. Woodworking is a lot of fun. We want to help you just do it and achieve your goals!

We are always working on helpful tools and have more good stuff in the pipe. We want to help you keep sharp and accurate! It’s all about working to the line and making as perfectly as possible. Please visit our Woodworks Store!

Please remember to subscribe to our Blog, we offer both RSS and email feeds at the top of every blog page!

For much more frequent woodworking thought for your consideration, please follow our Twitter Feed:

Follow @evenfallstudios

We enjoy your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions! Please Contact Us.

Thanks for visiting Evenfall Studios!

© Copyright 2014 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

Through the years, I have fielded quite a few questions about shooting boards, and so I thought it might be nice to share some of the considerations with you, for your own thinking process.

Make or Buy?

That is a biggie, and it’s multifaceted. If you can make a shooting board accurately enough to suit what you need it to do, you may not be considering buying, but there are hurdles to leap.

Ask a few questions:

What is your time worth? You have a busy life, a full time job, a family that deserves quality time. When you get shop time, do you want to spend it making tools, or projects like furniture, jewelry boxes or cabinets? Time for most of us is in short supply. If you want your time spent making beautiful things for your family, then tools that can do what you need done, and directly are really nice to have.

Skills and tools- It seems simple enough, but that depends on a lot of things, and when you dig into it, the shooting board is not as simple as it looks. We all have saws and planes, but do we want a quick jig that will be accurate enough for the duration of a project, or do we want a tool with major capabilities and high accuracy, built to last for years with proper care? There are different ways of looking at it. Most of us don’t make our own planes, saws or shop machines, so if you’d rather buy than make, there is no harm or foul in buying, after all, it’s your shop and your choice.

It’s just wood, after all… Or is it just wood? We select Baltic Birch for it’s uniformity and stability, and then we accurize it a lot from there. Our observations over years have shown it to remain very accurate seasonally. Why not use metal? Lots of really good reasons. Metal isn’t automatically better than wood for these tools. They are unnecessarily heavy, much more difficult to mill, drill and accurize to the required degree, adding costs. Metal to metal can be destructively hard on handplanes as well as leave unwanted marks on wood. Even UHMW doesn’t slide like waxed wood. Like planing in the usual way, a waxed plane sole on a waxed shooting board chute is a smooth easy and accurate ride.

A shooting board that is made to last years and work in a number of different angles is a bigger project than it appears. There are aspects of such a tool that are important in the making, and there are other aspects that seem cool on their face, but actually breed inaccuracy. Multi-position fences that can be set accurately to less than a degree of accuracy take some care in making. Straightness over the the length of chutes and fences, in the 0.001-2 inch range from 12- 30 inches long takes great care to achieve.

Straightness, coplanarity and calibratable angular accuracy are very important qualities to the shooting board as a tool. They can give a simple block plane the accuracy of a surface grinder. They may not look as beautiful as a tool unto themselves, but the beauty is built into what they help make. Stable materials and accurate surfaces become the beauty in your work. In a rectilinear tool, it seems deceivingly simple at a glance, but using the wrong material can make all this accuracy difficult to achieve and maintain.

Making a shooting board is careful work. It takes mindfulness and layout skill, finely tuned tools, accurate machines and a developed discerning eye to make. It can be harder to make if you don’t use power tools at all. One of my clients once said, If I had a good shooting board, I would then have a tool that could help me make a good shooting board. That has a lot of truth to it.

This is about your present and future creativity. How capable would you like the shooting board to be? One or two angles, many angles? It’s not about having a built in protractor, it is about being able to be accurately set the shooting board with a tool as nice as a Starrett Protractor or a high quality square so the quality of the setting can be assured. Then it’s about retaining that accuracy while the business is done. Calibratable settings? Yes! How can you compensate for wood movement so accuracy issues don’t keep you from making whatever, whenever in the future? We have to be able to calibrate accuracy before use.

What are shooting boards commonly used for? There are plenty of good instances. Squaring boards that will have dovetails laid out and cut on them. It helps accurize and show the layout, and that is what squares the box when you assemble it. Un-squareness in the layout will amount to an un-square, possibly unusable box. Care before the cut is what makes for fine work. Want layout lines you can see in endgrain, so you can saw perfectly? Shoot the endgrain first.

Small, short and thin stocks are safer to do on a shooting board, and that goes for both long and end grain. Machines love to eat workpieces this small, while exposing your fingers to dangerous cutters. Our shooting boards offer a planing stop accessory, so you can thickness material too. It is a great tool for small box work, or anything with smallish parts. Much safer than a machine and it makes small box making a dream.

We offer accessory fences that make it possible to shoot material that extend all the way to the width of a 2 inch plane iron on the board, about 1-3/4 width, so the shooting board’s domain into thick work is easily expanded if desired.

Mitering moldings is a big reason for accurate shooting. Hollows and rounds molding planes are very popular; considering a half set of hollows and rounds can set you back more than the $3,500+ range, why not shoot your molding work with an accurate tool? Moldings make for twice the work in a shooting board. You’ll need twin chutes, multiple fences and sometimes multiple fence angles because molding shooting requires the molding to be accurized to fit in it’s installed position, and the shooting board has to be able to emulate that.

Store bought and machine made moldings are also widely made and used in shop, and all types of moldings benefit from shooting board accuracy and finish quality. If this is work you’ll have in your future, then you’ll want to have a shooting board that is up to the task, whether you make or buy. We offer a couple of different shooting board models specifically made for addressing custom molding work and miters in different directions.

Joining veneer is an important job for the shooting board. This is important in furniture making, box making, lutherie… From long book matching, planing specific angles for sunbursts or compass points, inlay work, even making parquetry is important work for the shooting board. Many different angles apply and can be accurized with boards that are set up to address this work.

Layout for joinery can be helped by shooting the surfaces that will bear the layout tools, as well as the layout marks prior to cutting. I have also used the shooting board to true leather.

Sanding shooting tools are available for shooting boards, and I have used them to true plywoods, plastics and other materials that aren’t easily planed.

Other nice things a shooting board can do here is accurize length and squareness as well as remove saw marks and tear out from the cutting process, dressing things up with a hand plane to a surface smoothness that is similar to 5-600 grit sandpaper right off the plane. The shooting board can be a very well rounded makers tool.

If odd angles are desired or if you have work that has to match angles that are not standard, we also offer an accessory fence for shooting almost any angle between 0-90 degrees. Shoot any angle you want or need as accurately (or inaccurately) as you require.

To be certain, the shooting board can be used very flexibly, to accurize most anything you want. It is perfectly fine to think outside the box with it.

It’s Your Shop. It’s also your time. What you do with it should be what you want to do with it. I can tell you, that after making hundreds and hundreds of shooting boards full time for years now, it still isn’t anything less than careful work. I work to 0.001 inch tolerances daily, but I know that isn’t for everyone. I personally use a lot of specialized tools in my shop to help me be accurate and productive, but they are often tools a lot of woodworkers may not wish to have, unless they are also machinists.

In my shop, I approach the making of a shooting board like I would an infill plane. It takes time and care to make, fitments must be precise, and are made to last years with proper care. It’s all precision from the get go, and that’s what you’ll get when you buy one of ours. My eye is to your future craftsmanship, so I want the accuracy and capabilities to be there so you can go wherever you like with your creativity. Caring about your craftsmanship is what our tools are about, so I take steps beyond what you might for yourself to assure our tools will give you all of your craftsmanship at it’s best.

So make or buy? I can’t really tell you what you should do. It’s up to you, because it’s your shop. For our part should you choose to buy, our tools offer a lot of variety, capability and accuracy for use with your craftsmanship. A shooting board can help you fight above your weight when performing quality work, and enable you to do more when you have less than a full kit of tools. There is no disgrace in owning a custom made precision tool that can enable you to make creatively and accurately in many, many ways. If you prefer to make furniture rather than tools, we have a selection of helpful Shooting Boards and Woodworking Tools to help you do exactly that.

Please remember to subscribe to our Blog, we offer both RSS and email feeds at the top of every blog page!

For much more frequent woodworking thought for your consideration, please follow our Twitter Feed:

Follow @evenfallstudios

We enjoy your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions! Please Contact Us.

Thanks for visiting Evenfall Studios!

© Copyright 2014 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

It has been a busy 2014!

We released quite a few new Shooting Board versions and models, offering more options for hand planes that can run in an enclosed chute, (such as the Veritas LA Jack, Lie-Nielsen LN-9 and the 62 LA Jack of any make) as well as the accuracy, precision and flexibility for how you work. The good news here is that you may not need to own a “Shooting Board Plane” to enjoy the same experience of shooting with an enclosed plane chute! We have heard from many woodworkers that they enjoy having the flexibility to set their shooting boards with high accuracy, or off angle to compensate for any errors in the work. Our shooting boards allow you to do both. Do you need repeatable accuracy at any angle? We can help you with that!

We also released the MagStrop, our new magnetic, quick change sharpening stations that allow for fast dry sharpening of your tools quickly so you can keep woodworking. The feedback we are getting – that being able to sharpen quickly without disturbing the ongoing project is really nice, they fit in a small space and that sharpening with more ease is meaningful to sharpening more often. There is less need to rebuild edges from scratch and that is the kind of feedback we love to hear!

Another plus is that we finished researching and testing Hoses Wands and Attachments for Shop Vacuums of most any make so that we could bring you a line of the attachments and hoses that we use for our shop. These are not the hoses and attachments that are commonly marketed for use with shop vacuums. These are commercial grade cleaning tools that totally hot rod the shop vacuum’s capabilities, work very flexibly in the shop, play well with power tools and clean the shop better than anything else we’ve tried! We like them so well, we wanted to offer them to you! If you are tired of tree trunk hoses and end tools that excel at sucking themselves to the floor, then you’ll love these accessories when you upgrade!

As a toolmaker, I work with woods, metals, plastics, leathers, and glass. My shop runs the gambit of all of it and keeping up with all the different cleaning and dust collection tasks can be challenging. We feel these are the best upgrade attachments for the shop vacuum available anywhere. If you have not been able to justify the price of some super high end shop vacuums out there, we understand. We know that many shop vacuums equal or better the CFM ratings of the high end models, and we can now offer you affordable hoses and hose end attachments that are very compatible with efficient shop cleaning and power tool dust control. Oh, and they even fit those high end shop vacuums too!

If you haven’t looked recently, please check out all this in our store!

We would like to take a moment to thank all our clients, readers and visitors who come to Evenfall Studios and the Woodworks Library throughout the year as a source for custom made, precision woodworking tools, woodworking content, information, vintage woodworking/tradecraft texts and instruction. We are still a one man shop, striving to make the best tooling possible. We still make most everything we offer, except the Shop Vacuum accessories right here in shop, by hand and eye, no CNC.

Our website and web store are always here, always open, to help and support woodworkers everywhere, 24/7. Our store is ready for you if you receive gift cards for Christmas and want to order some great new tools! Sometimes you just want to get to making the things you want, not the tools you need. We are ready to help get you up and woodworking! If it is precision you need from your woodworking tools, precision is what we do, you have come to the right place!

Please don’t forget our past blog articles, which are easily accessed from the index in the header navigation bar, There is a lot of relevant information to help your precision and accuracy as a woodworker and maker. Also, there is the Woodworks Library. Well over 200 old books that are as relevant to making today as ever! We have a lot to be thankful for this year, thank you for your business and support!

We have more big plans for the coming year and look forward to seeing you in 2015!

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All the very best from my wife and I.

~ Rob Hanson

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Please remember to subscribe to our Blog, we offer both RSS and email feeds at the top of every blog page!

For much more frequent woodworking thought for your consideration, please follow our Twitter Feed:

Follow @evenfallstudios

We enjoy your questions, comments, ideas and suggestions! Please Contact Us.

Thanks for visiting Evenfall Studios!

© Copyright 2014 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

I have been considering an occasional column on our blog, just for sharing some various thoughts and news with you, so welcome to Volume One, 2015.

For small businesses, it is often challenging getting the word out. I want to touch on the scope of our blog. It wears several hats. We are a small family business, a one man custom tool making shop. I make precision tools for woodworkers and makers. Some of the ways we use the blog is to provide methods for working that have a lot of application on any project. We also use it to help teach and inform about our tools and methods that can help woodworking become easier and more accurate for you.

Getting the word out to woodworkers all over the world about what we do and what we may be able to help you do in making is a big part of our blog. I’m remiss about not blogging more often and I do try, but it happens. Client work in the shop and the matters of life are something we all can understand in our own way. We appreciate all our subscribers and readers. Our blog is aggregated by Leif at the Norse Woodsmith Aggregator and has been for years. Recently our blog has been aggregated by Siavosh over at woodspotting.com, which is a new form of Aggregator that is growing fast and allows people to submit blogs to it. We really appreciate both of them for their their support in helping us network and get the word out. If you enjoy our blog or use it as a reference, please feel free to bookmark, subscribe directly via RSS or email as well. This helps us stay in touch and we appreciate your support.

As a side note regarding our blog, I want to remind you that many of the articles I’ve written here are meant to work as reference material resources, and I have made it as easy as I can to help you to refer back to any of them by using the “Blog Index” in the top menu at the top of the page here.

We are also using Twitter and you can find us there as @evenfallstudios. We welcome you to follow us there. Its short and to the point, and we can share links and information with you pretty easy from there, and it helps keep you up on what’s new or news from us! There is a link below and in the sidebar on this page that you can click, and it should hook you right up.

We are also working on developing a subscription email list to help us keep in touch with you directly if you like. It isn’t something we intend to use too often so don’t worry, we won’t fill your inbox, but the scope of some of what we share on the email list will be exclusive to list members only. We hope to have something ready to go in the not too distant future, please stay tuned and I’ll announce when we roll it out here on the blog.

We are here in support of woodworking and making all over the world. Our website has a lot of different woodworking resources including a well rounded library, Data and references which are very useful, and a store for ordering the tools we offer and custom make, open 24/7/365. We appreciate your support and business! Please let us know if there is something we can make for you.

I’m interested in some feedback. I have some Donkey Ear designs I am developing here, some that work as a companion to our shooting boards and others which stand alone, and I thought while I am in the R&D stages that I would ask your thoughts on how you see the use of this tool in your shops. I can’t say yet how this all will evolve, but I am hoping that this will evolve to become part of our line of very helpful shooting appliances for everyone. If you would like to share your thoughts, or show interest in donkey ears please Contact Us!

I also wanted to touch on woodworking and making – on the whole. There has been some long running theories on tooling, both electrical and hand powered. I’ve even heard from some internet sources that certain kinds of tools – hand tools only – are required, or are the gateway for true craftsmanship. I’m afraid I can’t agree. After 30 years as a professional in the trades, I feel I have worked along side plenty of skillful craftsman (while striving for my best work, myself) and they were much more than the sum of their tools.

All tools are useful to us in some application. Some are meant for speed, others for accuracy and finesse. Craftsmanship is in the wisdom to choose and wield tooling of any kind artfully, productively and wisely. Truly, craft embodies all of making in all materials, using the tooling that accomplishes it, both powered and by hand, and the mind behind the tool that is it’s guide. Craftsmanship is in the hand and eye, guiding those tools from a developed practice. Any craftsman is free to choose their own tools. I think anyone who wants to be a craftsman can be a craftsman. Craftsmanship is all about developed practice. Your personal practice, there is no substitute, it is an experiential understanding and beyond the reach of written words.

The best craftsmen keep focused on learning something new everyday. The picture is big and it’s good to try to keep our focus open wide. They use what they have done in the past as a guide to help them make in the present and future. It’s a great way to look at making. Be careful not to fall into the trap of listening too intently to someone tell you that hand tools are the only truly craftsman way. There is only so much time and energy in life, so we must choose battles carefully. Tools are part of the battle armor. Some tools are for speed, and others for accuracy and finesse. To become accomplished, the right tool at the right time in skilled hands is right. If you fully inherit the fundamentals, then your imagination is the limit. The race is long. In the end it is mostly with yourself.

We offer some very nice tools that allow you to go directly to quality results without wasting a lot of money on wasting wood, or on tools that wont quite get you there. In fact, many of the tools we offer are meant to help tools you may already own work better and more accurately. We make tools that help you with your craftsmanship. We hope as you continue to advance your craft, you’ll choose some of your tools from us! Thank you for your continued support and readership!

We are rolling into year seven as toolmakers and we are “shooting” for many more. Again, thank you all for your support and we hope you’ll consider us for helping tool your shop with tools of craftsmanship for fine woodworking.

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© Copyright 2015 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.

I get questions about our shooting boards from time to time, so I thought I’d help out by sharing the Q&A stream with you.

Q: Why do we use shooting boards?

A: Shooting boards have been pretty common in woodworking for the last 200 years and were widely taught for use in Educational Sloyd. Shooting devices certainly predate 200 years ago, but were less common when furniture was less complex. They are tools that help reduce the workmanship of risk, reduce the complexity of difficult work such as specific needs for straightness and angles, and help enhance woodworker safety, particularly on small parts.

Making anything from wood means working to the lines and begins with layout lines on accurate boards. Lines are then sawn closely on the waste side and finished to the line, smooth with planes to remove the saw marks. When the need for a line is to fit parts precisely with other parts, that line is planed with a shooting board. The shooting board and a sharp plane can improve upon any sawn line whether it was cut by hand or machine, removing all the tearout and leaving a crisp edge and smooth surface. It also reduces risk to work the further a project progresses. Shooting boards offer a great deal of surety in the work.

Q: Why offer Shooting Boards as a tool, Don’t people make those from scraps around the shop?

A: A shooting board is a device that can offer accuracy to woodworkers that rivals machinist accuracy. This is really handy for fine work in woodworking. Historically, as the woodworker has acquired tooling of higher precision, the appearance of their work has reflected it. To make a tool capable of this precision with repeatability in accuracy and durability requires a specialized manufacturing process. The shooting board has to be more accurate than the things it will be used to make.

Many scraps of wood and quick build methods for making any shooting tool usually result in short term accuracy, or a jig that doesn’t last. We found we could offer woodworkers a very versatile shooting board, that is multiple angle capable, and able to calibrate one-thousandth inch (0.001) accuracy while compensating for seasonal wood movement.

While anyone is welcome to make their own shooting board, we specialize in making them to a high degree of lasting precision. Many people expressed to us that making tools for high accuracy isn’t easy, and others would rather save their time for making projects that are not shop tools. We understand. Quality, accuracy and precision are key to a fine appearance and helpful to accomplishing everyone’s finest work. Time is elusive. Some timbers, moldings, veneers and flitches are expensive and irreplaceable. Our shooting boards are here to help!

Q: Which Shooting Board type is the best overall?

A: Just about everyone will use their strong hand to push the hand plane on the chute, will have a need to shoot stock that is fully square or rectangular and will find having the 45 degree and 90 degree angles very handy. Every Shooting Board Model we offer except the Long Grain Shooters will provide these capabilities. If you need capabilities beyond these, we offer those too, so think about the future and what you would like to make.

The best shooting board for a job may be quite specialized for that job, but there are also boards that will handle a great deal of general work, and they are well worth having on hand. We specialize in shooting boards that will cover a lot of woodworking situations.

Q: Shooting Boards are known for making accurate angles, but what about matching something that isn’t exactly accurate?

A: A shooting board with a nailed and glued in fence will likely suffer from wood movement and the resultant inaccuracy. We spec woods that are highly stable for tools of accuracy, and design +/- 3 degrees of adjustment into the angle calibration of our fences to compensate for most of the slight inaccuracy that can happen with wood and its movement. We also offer the “Any Angle Fence” to adjust for any angle you have or need. If the angle you need is a little off, our fences can usually adjust and adapt. If you need angles that are more than a little off common angles, we have a fence for that too!

Q: Why Shooting Boards that offer more than one or two angles?

A: We offer shooting boards that allow woodworkers precision in any project the imagine. Bookmatch joins, and for angles that will help join up to 12 sided objects. We want to leave a lot of capability in the hands of imagination and think that is good! We also offer a fence that allows figuring at any arbitrary angle, so you can make whatever you want with full precision accuracy. It’s mostly about value added empowerment that doesn’t impose on shop space, and building all that you can dream and imagine.

Q: What keeps my plane from cutting into the shooting board, and ruining it’s accuracy?

A: If you look at the sole of a standard bench plane, you’ll see there is about 1/8th to 3/16’ths inch from the side plate of the plane to the mouth. Then there is usually another 1/16th-ish gap between the mouth and the blade. The plane rides in the chute on the side plate and the mouth position never reaches the base of the chute. This space rides the accurate edge we put on the chute and is never cut away. We don’t recommend using Rabbet or Shoulder Planes on our shooting boards.

Q: My shooting board fence does not seem to reach the edge of the chute. How does this happen?

A: How it happens is from having a setting on the shooting plane that is for a too thick shaving. Shooting is most commonly done in end grain wood fibers. Its a difficult cut cross cutting grain with a plane iron, the most difficult cuts the plane and iron must achieve. End grain cuts – even angular ones are across the grain, and require both sharp irons and thin iron settings to get the best quality.

We recommend setting the plane iron for no more than a 0.002 inch cut thickness with the 0.001 thickness preferred for the best finish. Leave room for a thin shaving on the final pass for the nicest work. Never take a run at the work piece. This can bruise the workpiece and will surely speed the dulling of your iron. If the iron is sharp as it should be for this difficult work, it will slice and leave a nice finish by bringing the iron up to the wood gently and pushing through. Best results will provide you with shavings. Dust is an indication of a dull iron.

With an iron setting of 0.001-2 inch, as outlined above, the plane will never wear the shooting board’s fence beyond this depth of cut.

Q: What does “Calibrating” the Shooting Board mean?

A: It means setting the angle for the fence accurately. Our boards offer a great deal of options when it comes to the angles you can shoot. When it comes to high levels of accuracy, it may surprise you, but many materials experience movement from heat or humidity, so to be angularly accurate, it is best to confirm the accuracy of the angle we need before we shoot. It’s easy, and can be done with many different angle setting tools, we like using drafting squares. Calibration means you can have an accurate shooting board from a quick calibration process for the first shot on any day of the year.

Q: What is important to shooting board accuracy ?

A: Quality Assurance is as important to us as our tool accuracy. We employ tooling from Starrett, Mitutoyo and certified granite surface plates to help create and confirm this.

There are actually four dimensions to accurize per cut. Top to bottom and side to side. Our part in creating this accuracy for the tool happens during the making of each shooting board. We cut and confirm that the chute edge is straight to 0.001 inch over it’s length, then we test, adjust and confirm that the chute has become coplanar with the top, also to 0.001 inch tolerances. The fence is flat on each edge to 0.001 straight, and square to the same standard. Accuracy like that helps assure you of the angles you set. We want your craftsmanship to shine.

Q: Do we really need accuracy in woodworking?

A: It depends on what is being made and who the maker is. Our best work comes from the highest accuracy and precision. This is not completely about measuring., but it is all about the fit and finish. Joinery fitments are everything to the joint and often beyond. So are decorative fitments like moldings, veneering or parquetry. Pieces that fit together with perfection are accurately laid out and accurately made. This also lends itself to the exact replication of multiple parts. The best fitment we can make will be lasting fitment, and it will look as good as we made it for years. When you can make to that level, there is never a need to apologize for skills or tools. the proof in in the making. We offer a tool that simply and directly helps you make as good as you want.

The nicer you want to make anything, the more important all this will become.

Q: Who can use this tool?

A: Any one, most any age, and any skill level. A second hand block plane is priced well for entry level and will work to 4/4 thicknesses easily. Any plane that is sharp can play. Any plane you have can shoot. The shooting board will help you fight above your weight if you are developing skills, and no matter who you are, it can help you look really good!

We custom make these tools to order for woodworkers world wide. Are you ready to take your making capabilities to a higher level? It’s easy! We offer a wide range of shooting boards to fit the woodworking you do, and the woodworking you have imagined. Check them out in our Woodworks Store, Order when you discover the tool that best fits your work.

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© Copyright 2015 by Rob Hanson for evenfallstudios.com All Rights Reserved.