Desperate and foolish folk on UK Workshop asked for a brain dump on making a basic shooting board - this is it. You'll find a basket of eggs to suck on your left...

	Before we go any further, naming of parts.
	The first crucial step is to stop worrying about the details. Making a shooting board is not rocket science. Only one thing is really important at the planning stage - the thickness of the upper board that the sole of the plane runs against must be greater than the thickness of the sides of the plane you intend to use. This'll explain the perrenial question "Why doesn't the shooting board get planed away?" too.
	In the shot above you can see the blade extends right down to, and beyond, the surface of the upper board. But here on the left the dark area is where the blade doesn’t reach right to the side of the mouth, and thus the blade isn’t planing into the guiding edge at all. So it's not exactly "side thickness", but you know what I mean.
	Huh? I hear you say. Well, if it’s thinner then you’ll just plane a step in the work piece. With luck this terrible graphic might explain..
	And here’s what it looks like in practice using the thick-sided Veritas bevel-up panel plane on a board designed for the thinner-sided Lie-Nielsen bevel-up smoother. Notice how the whole of the end has yet to be planed because the plane has been stopped by the step that’s been formed? That’s exactly the same thing that happens to the guiding edge of the shooting board itself, and what stops it being planed away.
	Might be easier to see in this shot. Still don’t get it? Well try making a board with the upper board thinner than the sides of you plane and see what happens. Or you could just take mine and generations of previous woodworkers' word for it.

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