Shooting board

[Beba]

I saw a reference to a “shooting board” for making shafts. Del mentioned it’s easy enough to make one with a sharp plane. Any explanations and / or pics will be quite helpful.

Thank you,
Bill

[Beba]

Ok, a 131 views and no reply. For anyone that may have had the same question, I did a little more research.
It’s nothing more than a board with a “V” groove cut in the length with a block attached to the end flush with the board. It holds a shaft blank so you can work it with a small plane. Turns out I’ve made 2 and didn’t know they had a name. 1 as described and 1 with 6 groves. I use the large one in a power planer to quickly reduce square blanks to 8 sided blanks. Saves a fair amount of time.

[BowEd]

At first I thought your post heading shooting board was going to be about learning a persons' draw length as I've seen on line.
But see what you mean now.That groove holds it still very well.I've got a groove in my work bench that I've done that with even on my shoot shafts but with an eight inch 2"by4" sanding block and 60 to 36 grit sanding paper.
Acquiring a hand power planer is a plus.I use that for tapering slats for laminated bows also.

[Deerhunter21]

How did you make it beba? i have tried to make one 2 or three times and it didnt turn out well. I dunno, im not that great at woodworking as much as i love the hobby lol!

[Beba]

Bowed, the power hand planer sounds like it could be handy in several applications.
Hunter21, made the 1st 1 from a straight 2x4 anthe other from a good piece of red oak board. I used a small table saw. Set the angle to 45 degrees, set blade height to 3/8”. Set the fence to hold the lines marked on the ends of the board. Glued and screwed a scrap piece on 1 end then cut it flush to the main board. The single works great with a sharp thumb plain. The 6 arrow board wast a little tricky. Need identical shaft blanks for it to pull threw the planer properly.

[BowEd]

I made a set up once with a router and also using a power drill with the shaft spinning as it goes by the router.
Worked pretty good actually.
Tested a lot of different types of wood for arrow shafts then.Honey locust,walnut,ash,maple,black locust,and some more I forget.
They all make serviceable arrow shafts.
Personally I use shoot shafts.They are tougher than split timber shafts.I reduce them down with them in the chuck of a drill and sand paper.

[organic_archer]

Shooting boards are worth their weight in gold and pretty self-explanatory to make. Mine is just two poplar boards with a hand-planed edge. You can glue or screw them together. It has an endcap on one side to prevent the arrow blanks from sliding off as you push against them with the plane. The working groove accepts up to 36" shafts, but it can be made as long or short as you'd like. The markings at 6, 10 and 12 inches are for tapering shafts. These are so much more enjoyable to use than the variety of noisy power tool jigs.

I rip 3/8 or 7/16 squares on the table saw from carefully selected boards. Plane those on the shooting board to 8-sided, and then 16-sided shafts. Then you can either sand them by hand or chuck them into a power drill and spin them to get the final round shape. After a little practice, you can crank out some really nice shafts.

[Buckskinner]

That's slick, I think I need to make one of those!