I’m a big fan of plane stops. It’s much faster to butt a board against a stop rather than clamp it in a vise or between two benchdogs for face-planing. Still, I was a little hesitant to try the new planing stop by Veritas. First, it’s easy enough to make one, and second, the thought of planing against a metal stop left me a bit queasy. But I took a pair home to use in my shop.

After a few weeks, they’ve gotten a lot of use. The thing I really like is that unlike my shopmade stop that clamps into my front vise, the Veritas stop frees up the vise for other tasks. This comes in handy when planing parts like table aprons, where I’ll plane the face using a stop and then clamp it in the vise to hit the edges.

The posts underneath fit nicely in 3⁄4-in. dog holes, and they can be adjusted to fit any dog spacing up to 9-in. apart. The aluminum stop is less than 1⁄4-in. thick, which let me plane fairly thin stock. I did hit it once with my plane, but there was no apparent damage to the iron.

Finally, adding a second Veritas stop perpendicular to the end stop helps secure long or narrow workpieces.

Overall, the new Veritas planing stop is an affordable bench accessory that will get plenty of use.

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