Using a shooting board does do a cleaner job of making shafts, but does take a lot longer. I now use the veritas dowl maker. The set up is a pain, but once it’s set you can run shafts pretty quick. With it, the wood has to be just right or the shafts are terribly rough. When I buy Sitka, I have to find tight grained with mostly late wood, then the shafts come out perfectly smooth. Most Sitka isn’t like that tho.
When cutting out the square stock, the bandsaw is the way to go, avoid the table saw. A bandsaw blade is 1/4 the width of a table saw blade, even if you use a thin kerf table saw blade there is a lot of waste. 8 cuts with a table saw, and you’ve lost an inch of wood. While a kerf of a bandsaw is roughly .035, you get almost 30 cuts before you burn an inch.