"Lowell Holmes" wrote in message
news:OBcVh.9069$h8.2964@trnddc06...

"John Grossbohlin" wrote in message
nk.net...

"steve" wrote in message
...
snip

I second the hand plane and shooting board approach. My sons, then ages 8
and 11, made picture frames for their grandmother for Christmas and put
their school pictures in the frames. They started out with skip planed
walnut and using only hand tools ended up with perfect miters and frames
with square corners. They used rip and cross cut panel saws and hand
planes to prepare the stock and then, using the 45 degree shooting board
jig as a guide cut the miters with a back saw. The miters were then trued
up using a plane and the shooting board.

I posted a detail of corners of both frames on ABPW and a picture of 8
year old Joshua shooting a miter.

BTW, the boys won a second place ribbon for these frames at Woodworkers
Showcase. Garrett Hack, Beth Ireland, John Fox and Adam Kropinski were
the judges... the technique works and rather than owning a specialty
purpose guillotine trimmer you have a bench plane that can be used for
other projects.

John

Besides. a shooting board gives you an excuse to buy a Veritas bevel up
jack plane. Paul Sellers states in his article (Popular Woodworking) that
the low angle planes take the shooting boards to the next level. I use a
Bailey in mine.

Is that a #4 Bailey your son is using?

It's an L-N #4 with York frog. Not ideal for shooting end grain--I bought it
for dealing with curly maple--but it works better than my stock Stanley #4
as the iron is thicker and it cuts cleaner. The boys cannot handle the L-N
#7 that I typically use for that purpose so I recently got a L-N #5 Jack for
them to use. I find the mass of the larger planes is helpful in shooting end
grain, particularly with wide boards.

The boys tried my associate's L-N low angle Jack plane at Showcase but the
sides of the plane are much smaller than the Bailey profile and they kept
rocking the plane. I'm not sure if the Veritas plane presents the same
problem or not--I didn't think to check it at the Lee Valley booth at
Showcase. I did let them handle the L-N #5 plane at the L-N booth and they
seemed fine with that.

I had hoped to introduce the boys to Tom L-N and Robin Lee but neither were
there... sigh Tom was shooting another video and the guys at the Lee
Valley booth simply said Robin wasn't there. Oh well, maybe next year!

John