Shooting Plane and Guide Track are an Awesome Pair

If you’ve ever used a shooting board, you don’t see the benefit of it. However, once you’ve used one, say to fit drawer parts or trim a shelf to length with precision, you wonder how you ever got by without it. Eventually, you use it all the time. That’s when you are struck with another moment of clarity: It pays to have a dedicated shooting plane. Why? Comfort. Bench planes certainly do the job, but because they aren’t designed to be held on their side, your hand begins to hurt rather quickly. 

Recently I tried Veritas’s new shooting plane and their guide track, an accessory for a shopmade shooting board. The shooting plane has many great features, but by far my favorite is the tote, which can be adjusted to any angle within a 60° range. This allows you to personalize the angle for the comfort of your hand and arm. I’ve used the plane a lot with no discomfort. 

The blade rests on a bed (like a block plane), which is skewed 20°, giving you the advantages of a skewed cut without the aggravation of sharpening a skewed blade. Depth adjustments to the blade were smooth, and set screws in the plane body kept the cutting edge parallel to the mouth. Speaking of the mouth, it’s adjustable, so you can close it down tight to the blade for light shavings. The plane I tested had a PM-V11 blade, which I liked very much. An O1 blade is also available.

I made a new shooting board to test the plane, and equipped it with a 24-in.-long Veritas shooting board track. Simply put, the track is wonderful. Made from aluminum, it has an adjustable rail that snugs up against the plane’s sole to keep it moving in a straight line without any need to press it sideways against the shooting board. After I applied two pieces of UHMW tape to the track base and one to the rail (the tape is included with the rail), the plane glided smoothly with little effort. The track can be used with many different planes, so you don’t need a dedicated shooting plane to reap its benefits.

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