Making Mortises

[Paul Symchych]

I use a plain 'ol chisel the size of my mortise.
Don't forget that if you don't want to chop the mortise square you can always round off the corners of the tenon to match the hole and get just as secure a joint. Specially useful in extra hard wood that doesn't want to graciously allow squaring off a mortise. A chisel +/- a rasp will do that nicely.

Consider using a hardwood dowel as a pin both for strength and as a decorative feature. I use contrasting color dowels all the time. People notice and it sets a piece off from the mass produced items.

[Chris McLeester]

Thanks again to everyone for the great replies. The plunge router seems like the best solution to implement in the near term. I can always try something else later! I can't wait to do some practice mortises.

[John TenEyck]

Then we can move with the times and get a Domino.

And how much does one cost? Oh yeah, about $1200 for the little one once you get some of the stuff that makes it useful and some loose tenons. For the price of a bag of their tenons you could build my slot mortiser and have money left over. I'm sure I'd love the Domino, but it's just too expensive for this hobbiest woodworker. My machine is within the budget of anyone here and can do most things a Domino can do and some things it can't.

John

[Frank Drew]

Chris,

Since you already have a plunge router I agree with those who've suggested going that route; a simple mortising box to hold your work securely while the router rides on the top edges is quick and easy to build. Tage Frid detailed one years ago if you have access to FWW archives or back issues.

Don't forget that if you don't want to chop the mortise square you can always round off the corners of the tenon to match the hole and get just as secure a joint. Specially useful in extra hard wood that doesn't want to graciously allow squaring off a mortise. A chisel +/- a rasp will do that nicely.

I totally agree with Paul here; IMO, it's much quicker and easier to round the corners of the tenon than to chop the mortise ends square.

[Sam Stephens]

Here's the mortising jig I built from one of Carol Reed's books. Setup is a cinch and it's very precise for repeats.

DSC006221.JPGDSC006231.JPG

[Roy Harding]

Wow. Thanks for all the great replies. Given all this info, I think I will try out the plunge router and see how I can do with it. The mortise pal looks interesting, but the benchtop mortiser I was looking at was about the same price. Any recommendation for a chisel to use for squaring the corners? Do I need a special "mortising" chisel just to do that?

Depends on how deep your mortises are, and how often you'll be doing them. When I started I used generic bench chisels - but as I started doing more and more I invested in mortising chisels. The difference is that the mortising chisels are THICK, and the handle is built to take constant pounding. The result is a very robust chisel, designed to take a beating (which, after all, is what you are doing to a chisel when mortising - beating the heck out of it).

[Joe Hillmann]

Here is a great way to learn how to do it with a chisel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...o6NVYCc0#at=73

[Myk Rian]

If you don't plan on making a lot of mortices after this project, this has worked for me.