Mortise Tooling

[Jim Andrew]

Grizzly makes a horizontal boring machine you can use as a slot mortiser. It has a xy table and a lever to pivot the piece back and forth to make the slot.

[John TenEyck]

No doubt the Domino is a great machine, but it's expensive and really only does one thing. It does that very well, but that's all it does. Fine if you are a production shop, or really well heeled, but it's simply too expensive for many people to justify. That's what makes a shop built horizontal router mortiser so attractive. It's very low cost to build, like less than $100 if you are really frugal, and cuts mortises of any size. It also does a lot more than that, like make sliding dovetails, integral tenons, dowel holes, angled mortises, moldings, raised panels and more.

I used mine this weekend to make some raised door panels and mold the edges of the doors.













And, yes, the doors and drawer fronts were assembled with mortises cut with the mortiser, too.



Not many machines can do so much at so little cost.

John

[Jim Dwight]

I have tried drilling and chiseling but didn't like the results or speed. I liked the router cut mortises but screaming routers are not my favorite tool. tne need to round over tenons is also a drawback. I have a Jet hollow chisel mortiser now and it makes functionable mortises that aren't as pretty os routered ones. I may have a domino someday but I need lots of of other things first.