What I currently do is I link the project to another location and give it the same name, then check the box where it says "Branch after share." And then I would Check out the shared project and work off it. And finally merge with the original project.
This works okay, but it feels very clunky: I have multiple instances of the project on my drive; I have to change physical address of the website (i use asp.net 1.1) every time I work on a different branch;
That doesn't feel like the right way to do it. How do you branch your projects with VSS?