A shooting board is a woodworking

Woodworking

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood.-History:Along with stone, mud, and animal parts, wood was one of the first materials worked by early humans. Microwear analysis of the Mousterian stone tools used by the Neanderthals show that many were used to work wood...

 workbench

Workbench

A workbench is sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewelers benches to the huge benches used by staircase makers...

 accessory which is used in combination with a hand plane to trim and square up the edges and ends of boards.

There are two specific purposes to which shooting boards are applied: jointing

Edge jointing

Edge jointing or just jointing is the process of making the edge of a wooden board straight and true in preparation for subsequent operations, often ultimately leading to joining two or more components together. Traditionally, jointing was performed using a jointer plane...

 and end grain trimming. The design of the shooting board remains fundamentally the same in both cases but the length of the board will vary - with the boards used for jointing being much longer than those intended for end grain trimming.

A shooting board consists of a flat board, the base, with a stop at one end, similar to a bench hook

Bench hook

A bench hook is a workbench accessory used in woodworking. The purpose of the bench hook is to provide a stop against which a piece of wood being worked can be placed to hold it steady whilst cutting, planing, or chiseling that piece of wood....

, on which the board to be planed is rested. The stop prevents the board from sliding as it is planed.

Parallel to the base and slightly lower is a secondary surface, the fence, which may be a separate board, or may be a rebate

Rabbet

A rabbet is a recess or groove cut into the edge of a piece of machineable material, usually wood. When viewed in cross-section, a rabbet is two-sided and open to the edge or end of the surface into which it is cut....

 cut into the base. The difference in height between the base and the fence is to allow for the offset of the blade in the hand plane.

The purpose of the fence is to guide the plane along the edge of the board being planed such that the blade in the plane is presented at 90 degrees to the base of the shooting board. Assuming that the sides of the hand plane being used are perpendicular to the sole, this ensures an edge that is at 90 degrees to the face of the board.

For end grain trimming, the board is placed on the shooting board so that an edge adjacent to the end to be trimmed is hard against the stop. The woodworker will usually have scribed a line on the end to indicate how far to trim the board. The hand plane is rested on its side on the fence and held firmly against the end of the board whilst being pushed along its length. Jointing is performed the same way except that the board is oriented so that one end is against the stop and the edge to be jointed faces the fence.

One problem faced when using shooting boards repetitively is that the blade in the hand plane becomes worn very quickly in one spot. This requires frequent sharpening

Sharpening

Sharpening is the process of creating or refining a sharp edge of appropriate shape on a tool or implement designed for cutting. Sharpening is done by grinding away material on the implement with an abrasive substance harder than the material of the implement, followed sometimes by processes to...

 to ensure smooth and accurate cutting. The ramped shooting board addresses this problem by introducing a slope to the fence. As the hand plane moves along the fence, the slope causes the part of the blade in contact with the board to move along the blade's length. This even exposure of wood along the whole blade allows a longer blade life, as sharpening is less frequent.

Shooting boards can be made in various sizes and shapes to accommodate different tasks and it would not be uncommon to find a number of them in the workshop

Workshop

A workshop is a room or building which provides both the area and tools that may be required for the manufacture or repair of manufactured goods...

. One accessory that may be fitted to a shooting board is an angled stop, most commonly at 45 degrees. This allows mitres to be trimmed.