Quote Originally Posted by peter gagliardi View Post
You are kidding right? There have probably been millions upon millions of mortises cut with a hollow chisel mortiser, or chain mortiser for that matter.
I would dare say the bulk of factory and woodshop work out there uses them.
To make a statement that a router is faster, easier, and more accurate is quite a stretch. Accuracy is inherent to initial machining, fine tuning, and setup with these. They are dependent on the precision and accuracy of the user.
They will and do make accurate joinery at a speed and ease that a router could only hope for. When I started in business, I had to use a router and make a jig once for some mortises. ONCE!
Never again if I have options like a real dedicated machine.
In my experience, a router is the next slowest thing to hand chopping.
With chain and chisel machines, there is generally no vibration. If it is 1/2" it makes 1/2", but with a router, you get vibration and chatter causing inaccuracy that can easily affect and ruin normal glue joint tolerances.
If there were a race to do 100 mortises of a given size in any specie of wood, between a chain, or chisel mortiser and a router with any jig, the router would be the last place I would place a bet.
My horizontal router mortiser is faster than any benchtop mortiser ever thought of being. And the resultant mortises are clean and straight, with no chisel work required. How many hobbiests have a chain mortiser? And that only cuts the mortise. You still have to cut and adjust the matching tenon to fit that less than perfect mortise. I built one of my machines for a pro woodworker. He uses it exclusively now for cutting face frame mortises, and he makes a lot of kitchen cabinets. His floor mortiser is used only for really large mortises.

If you are getting vibration using a router you aren't using the right bit or you aren't using the correct technique.

Think about all the things now being cut with CNC machines. At their heart they are just routers.

John