I tend to like to make shooting boards in pairs; it’s not much additional work to make two at once, and having bench appliances in pairs occasionally has some advantages. More on that later. So the first task was to gather my materials; basically whatever I happened to have handy that might be suitable. I came up with a couple of pieces of 18mm Far Eastern ply about 29” x 8 1/8” for the base boards, a sheet of 9mm ply that would lend itself to being cut into three for the upper boards (two, plus a spare), and the remains of the almost-famous Board From H*** to make the stops. I tend to use pretty thin stuff for the upper board if I can get way with it, but if you go for 9mm and above you should be fine. 12mm is popular I think, but I didn’t have any… Sheet goods don’t look lovely, but they’re stable. Dimensions aren’t critical and I just chose the thickest bit of scrap from the off cuts box that was ready squared up. Yeah, so ideally you want it taller than the width of the plane, or at least taller than the thickest stuff you’re liable to want to shoot, but if it’s too tall then it’s harder to hold thinner stuff firmly, and you want the whole board long enough for every eventuality, but not so long it‘ll be unwieldy, and… Believe me, it’s really easy to spend so much time trying to decide the perfect dimensions that you never make the board at all - I know, ’cos I did just that for years. Don’t make your board too heavy, or you’ll never use it because it’s just too much of a pain to get out of it’s storage place, but other than that try what you like. It doesn’t take long to make another.

	The various bits should go together something like this.
	The base board pretty much dictated the overall size I’d end up with; a 2 ¼“ ledge for the plane to run on it’s side looked about right, so I cut the upper boards to width accordingly - 5 7/8“ as it turned out. With the length turning out at about 27” it’d work out just about right for shooting the edges of smaller stuff and the ends of practically anything. The second board would take care of mitres. By now the bizarre dimensions I’m using should have hammered home the fact that exact measurements simply aren’t important. A lot of these were based on the well-known rule of “that looks about right”. Rocket science it is not. I straightened up one edge of the upper boards which would end up as the guiding edge for the sole of the plane, then bevelled off the bottom edge. This is to give somewhere for the dust and debris of shooting to go to, rather than muck up the smooth flow of plane against straight edge. Needless to say I wasn’t going to foul up a good plane on the rather nasty pre-used ply.
	Just as an experiment I decided not to glue my boards together, but just use screws from the back. Dunno why, just fancied to. It’s not rocket science, remember?
	Starting to look like the real deal. Now we need the stops.
	Well making the stops is simply a case of finding a bit of squared off stock and fixing it to the board. In the case of the 90° board it worked out at 2 ¼” wide and 1 1/8” thick. Don’t forget to chisel off the far corner of the 90° stop so it won’t break out untidily.
	Length was left oversize to be trimmed back when finally fixed in place. I screwed it on from the back, but it’d be easier to screw down from the top really. Maybe I was feeling posh that day? Bolt it; screw it; glue it; bolt and screw it and glue it, whatever takes your fancy. Traditionally a housing with one tapered side was used, but that’s only really worth doing if you’re making your board in solid wood. In ply and other sheet goods it’s not really feasible. All that’s important is the face side of the stop is 90° to that guiding edge. Using a larger square to judge this is advisable...
	The mitre stop is another “that looks about right” job in size. If it helps the straight edge that the plane runs against worked out at around 2” long. The mitres were cut on the SCMS, but use your method of choice. Try to get spot on 45° ‘cos it makes life easier, but as long as they’re not too far off and the two angles add up to 90° you’ve got a workable situation.
	To fix the mitre one, assuming your stop angles are correct, you need to make sure you fix your stop with the angled faces at 45° to the guiding edge.

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