Shooting Boards - Cutting Lumber

Shooting boards are use to cut lumber. The picture below provides you with an excellent example of a shooting board that can be used to make precision cuts or even rip down long lengths of wood. Shooting boards can easily be replaced by saw guides that attach to your circular saw.

How Do You Use A Shooting Board?

Let's say that you wanted to cut 12 inch stair treads for your staircase. All you need to do is get a scrap piece of wood about 16 inches long and attach a small strip of lumber that's also 16 inches or longer to the bottom of it.

The small strip of lumber is going to travel along the edge of the lumber you're going to cut your 12 inch stair treads out of. The other scrap piece of wood is going to to travel along the surface of the material that you're going to cut your 12 inch stair treads out of.

Your circular saw will travel next to the scrap piece of wood, while you're moving both the circular saw and the shooting board along the edge of your stair tread materials.

How Do You Set Up A Shooting Board?

You will need to measure the distance between the saw blade and the side of the stair fence or base of the circular saw and then add that measurement, to the edge of your shooting board. The total distance between the saw blade and the small strip of lumber that's going to attach to the 16 inch long scrap piece of wood, will need to be the distance that you're going to be cutting.

After you have properly positioned the two boards, you can either screw or clamp the scrap piece of wood to the small strip of lumber.

You should always set the shooting board up, into its proper position and then make a test cut on another board or scrap piece of materials to verify your measurements. The last thing you want to do is cut a few boards, before you realize that the shooting board wasn't set up correctly.

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