My Vice-Held End-grain Planing Guide

My vertical vise-held, end-grain planing guide for planing the ends of wood dead square with ease works better than a shooting board especially if you have lots to do. Why do I say that? Because I have used a regular shooting board for almost six decades and at best they are really quite awkward, hog lots of essential benchtop space and disallow other work to go on most of the time because they are almost always in the way. Now, obviously, it does not replace the shooting board for mitre work nor for moulded stock like picture frames and such, so it's not really an either-or. Mine tucks neatly at the end of the bench and gets pulled to task in a split second or remains out until all of the pieces needing end squaring are done.

We decided to post a 14-minute video on making it and using it and in under two days, its had 32,000 views totalling 2,500 hours of viewing time so if a percentage of these people make one and use one over the next few decades my 15 minutes of being filmed as a DIY-how it's already been successful.

It literally takes five minutes to assemble once the wood is cut to size and then you've taken out any and all guesswork as to whether the end of your boards are square. It's so good that I rarely even check the end of my wood for square once done.

A thing that is most overlooked by the 'professional' questioners is the natural posture of planing vertically with the plane using both hands to support and manipulate the plane to the workpiece and the security of both guide and piece locked as they are in the vise. Nothing moves.

The next most common question is, "Doesn't the platform part deteriorate in use because the cutting iron planes the support rail?" Well, if you use the aid carefully, no, not really. But, if it did, it's just a couple of swipes more with the plane to correct the guide so I would anticipate this one guide alone lasting me fifty years of regular daily use.