Craftsmanship in Wood

I ran across an interesting article today illustrating the planing/shooting board setup used by Takuji Matsuda for use with kanna.

A Visit to Takuji Matsuda’s Kiribako Shop: Part 2 – Planing and Shooting Platform for Japanese Planes

The sixth and seventh photos are of particular interest to me. Matsuda is using his kanna to shoot the end grain of a board, holding the plane against the squared side of the planing board. In contrast to a Western style shooting board, Matsuda’s setup allows a conventional smoothing kanna to be used with the blade skewed. No kiwa-ganna needed(*).

I’m curious if anyone here has experience with this approach to shooting with kanna and can comment on it. As I get the new shop up and running, I realize that I have renewed interest in avoiding a disc or edge sander. I’ve used these in the past for tackling end grain on the posts and rails of my takadai, and they certainly do the job. That said, I’d prefer to go for planed finishes all around, which goes hand in hand with wanting to avoid sanding machinery in the shop(**).

(*) I’ve seen reference to using kiwi-ganna for shooting, but it seems a rabbet plane with the correct skew would plane away the entire registration surface on the edge of the shooting board. Does kiwa-ganna also refer to a skewed plane that’s not a rabbet plane?

(**) I now wonder if I’ve set myself on the path to owning one of those Japanese disc planers one day...

I had previously shown a picture of my japanese style shooting board in a post on a Planing Bench. The fence uses a sliding dovetail to attach to the board. The surfaces that support the kanna are simply glued on. Before switching to Japanese planes, I used a sloped shooting board (5 or 10 degrees) with a metal jack plane.

For me, the Japanese style shooting board is better if you are using a kanna. With a metal plane on a western shooting board, you have the mass of the plane and the force of your approach helping with the cut. I am generally holding the kanna with one hand, with the other on the workpiece, using short deliberate strokes.

Thanks djwong, that’s quite helpful!

For completeness, I did turn up Chris’ blog post about the en-ban-kanna rotary planing machine.

A kiwa ganna has a blade that comes to only one bottom arris of the, plane, unlike a shoulder plane which goes full width. A kiwa-ganna is an inside corner-cutting plane.

Thanks Chris. I’m aware of how kiwa-ganna are configured, but I should have been clearer: in the typical Western shooting board/plane setup, the rear of the blade is angled upwards. Naive use of a kiwa-ganna with the same skew orientation on such a shooting board would put the blade in full contact with the shooting board’s vertical reference edge. That seems like a recipe for non-square shooting as the board wears.

I have mine setup the way Odate shows, it works well. Mine has a lot of mileage on it and it has stayed true. If I have to tune it up once every year or so that is fine.

Thanks Brian. My expectations had been set differently; good to know that concern is overblown.