Bench stop addition for kindness

It's not always easy to accept dings in your work from things like bench dogs and bench stops when the work is pretty much done. There are times when you may not have the luxury of allowing for the possibility of damaging your wood with the prongs too. The pointed prongs might also prevent you from surface planing say a frame with finished outer edges, things like that. An addition I made to the bench provides a buffer that prevents any such digging in and works really well. It’s obviously simple to make, but the steps will guide you anyway.

I raised the prongs from their flush-to-the-bench position and then marked a piece of oak (any wood will work) for the height and width as shown directly from the stop.

I used a 1/4” chisel to get the mortise width.

I chopped the mortise  5/8” deep and worked the inside until it seated well.

You can cinch the stop down onto the mortise wall if you want to.

The stop works well square but you may want to plane it slightly out of square so the top edge of the block touches the wood being worked first.

If you are like me and you like to keep the plane registered on both forward and reverse strokes, place a piece of shelf liner between the work and the bench top. This works pretty well most of time.