Mortise Advice

[Joey Chavez]

When I started sliding down the slippery slope of hand tools one task I was certain I wouldn't be interested in was chopping out mortises, That changed one day when I had a couple mortises to make and felt too lazy to set up the drill press. First try, I had a much more accurate and squarer mortise than I ever had using a drill press and paring corners and even more surprising it took no time at all, and that was with a bevel edge chisel. I had an inexpensive 1/2 inch mortise chisel I bought just in case I ever wanted to give it a try, sharpened it up, practiced, now I'm hooked. I took the plunge today and ordered a 1/4 and 3/8 Ray Iles English mortise chisel pair from Tools For Woodworking (darn - backordered, although I believe it will be worth the wait). Now for the advice I'm looking for;

I own a LV 16 oz beech mallet for general use that has worked well so far. While I'm sure it's personal preference, I'm looking for opinions on moving up to a 24 oz mallet if this is going to be my primary method of making mortises. Or is there a favorite mallet out there you'd recommend?

Secondly - how important is a swan neck chisel to clean out the bottom of mortises? I'm wondering if the D2 steel of the Ray Iles chisels will hold up well enough to scraping the bottoms.


Thanks in advance!

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I never really bother cleaning the bottom of my mortises too much - no one sees them, and they don't get you much glue strength, so just make sure they're deep enough. I usually keep my mortises a bit deeper than my tenons.

A swan neck chisel really comes in handy when you're doing deep mortises - if the mortise is deep enough but not too long in chopping length. It really depends on what you're building. I could see using one if I was mortising a lock in a house door or something, but for the mortises I commonly make in furniture, I've not needed one yet.

[Adam Cherubini]

You need larger mallets for wider chisels. I think a lot of guys hit their tools too hard tho. Not sure of the right weight for a mallet and this is something you need to decide for yourself based on experience. You should be making, not buying mallets for this and several other reasons. I personally prefer carvers (turned) mallets because the head angle/orientation is one less thing to think about.

I recommend the Ray Illes chisels for their physical features, but having used one for a little while now, I can't say as I'm thrilled with the choice of steel. D2 is wear resistant which makes it difficult to sharpen. But it's not as tough as O-1 and wear resistance isn't what maintains an edge in use. Used side by side and dispassionately, I couldn't tell you it held its edge any better than a 150 yr old cast steel W.Butcher. What I can say is that it takes longer to hone. My preference would be to get the same chisel made out of O-1 which Ray doesn't offer afaIk.

For furniture making you should be buying 1/4" and 5/16". For interior woodwork 3/8 and 7/16" 1/2 is fairly rare in anything but the largest architectural jobs. I've used mine once or twice in 15 yrs. If you can only have one, you probably should own the 5/16", tho it's kind of a toss up between that and the 1/4".

Oh, and check out your favorite ww mags and see if you can find any additional thoughts on mortises!

Adam

[James Owen]

I like the D-2. It seems to hold an edge for a very long time, even in dry red oak.

My experience has been that the fastest and least painful way to sharpen the Ray Iles D-2 mortise chisels is with diamonds, followed by the 2000 grit Spyderco ceramic for polishing. If you follow normal bench procedure and resharpen or touch-up when the chisel starts to cut poorly, it doesn't really take any longer than touching up an O-1 or A-2 chisel, and the edge tends to last far longer, especially if you are chopping mortises in softer hard woods like walnut. YMMV.

[Graham Hughes (CA)]

I had much these same issues and settled eventually on a 30 oz urethane mallet as something that will not bruise and split the chisel handles. I'd prefer a wood mallet—the urethane gives too much—but my only large one in that weight is made out of some bizarre Aussie timber and is approximately as destructive as hitting it with a sledge.

I find I want a swan neck when the mortise gets deeper than about five times the width (or so). There's nothing inherently wrong with the D2 in the Iles chisels for that, but the geometry is wrong and the swan neck is easier to clear waste with. These things don't really seem to need to be sharp; they're mostly for levering out waste. Blind mortises with these proportions don't seem to happen often in furniture scale work: usually you are going to make a through mortise if you're going that deep. It does come up during some of what I laughably call my rough carpentry projects, which are all timber framing with 4x6s and 2x4s.

[Paul Saffold]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1bo6NVYCc0

Interesting video showing Peter Follansbee chopping a mortice on Lie-Nielsen YouTube. He starts in the center, goes deep then lengthens, others go shallow the full length then deepen.

[Jim Koepke]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1bo6NVYCc0

Interesting video showing Peter Follansbee chopping a mortice on Lie-Nielsen YouTube. He starts in the center, goes deep then lengthens, others go shallow the full length then deepen.

Put me down as a start in the center and work out kind of mortiser. Once the depth is established, the chisel is just taking thick paring cuts. It also keeps the ends of the mortise from being rolled over from levering out the waste.

jtk

[Tony Shea]

Peter;s method is def not the method I've been using for years. Similar idea but not exactly how I go about it. I may try switching it up a bit and work his method a few times to see how I do.

I typically work my way across the top of the whole mortise for the first bit until I establish a shallow depth which keeps my chisel registered properly along the walls of the mortise. This prevents me from getting my chisel too far to one side or the other (beyond my layout lines). Then I will start creating a large V and work that out toward the edges.

[Adam Cherubini]

I personally don't think it matters how or where you start. I start always at the end farthest away from me and work toward myself. All that is really important is that you establish a place for the chips to go. Fail this, and you compress the waste with the chisel and it makes it 10 times harder to remove. Also, where ever you start, know that the waste pushes the chisel back so if you start at the very end, you will probably overcut the line, pushing the material back. In my article I talked about bruising the ends while levering. The other issue of course (the one I'm saying here) is that you want to save some material at the ends and gently pair to the line.

BTW, we have the same issue with dovetail waste chopping and I rarely here it mentioned. If you put your chisel on the scribe line and mallet it in, you will undercut that line. You either have to account for this with your sawing, or you have to hold your chisel on the waste side of the line, chop, then pare back to the line.

[Jim Matthews]

This is freakin' awesome.

I don't know of any other forum, in any of my other interests where the "Big Dogs" come out to show us a thing or three.
I was thinking about Adam's first post, as I plowed through another mortise this evening. A little extra mass made this one considerably easier than the prior three I had just cut.

I'm not ready for period attire, just yet - but making big pieces of wood into smaller ones this way is much more satisfying.
Cheaper, too. (As long as I'm not competing for antique 'pig stickers', anyway.)

[Jack Curtis]

Here's my mortising bible, by Gorman: http://www.amgron.clara.net/mandtindex7.html

[Bob Coleman]

Roy Underhill did an episode where he made frame and panel doors. For a demonstration he chopped a mortise with the mortise on the edge of the wood and a piece of plexiglass attached somehow to form the fourth side. Kind of a cut-away view. pretty neat as you can see how the chips flow.

He chopped a majority of it with the chisel backwards, ie with the bevel towards the ends of the mortise and worked from the middle, widening the V as he went. I'm going to give that method a shot next time just to see how it works.

[Ryan Baker]

I use Roy's method and it works like a charm. "Lead with the bevel." The episode Bob mentioned can be viewed on the WWS web site.