Mortises in soft wood

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Welcome to the 'Creek John!

[Justin Florentine]

Thanks for this thread. I'm having the same problem with Fir. Will try router approach.

[jack forsberg]

chain cuts a good hole to if you need deeper. cedar is hard to cut clean. the Summer wood is very soft compared to the winter wood. If you got a chain mortiser or a Maka there good too

[David Wong]

A technique I learned from Chris Hall's class, is to use some camellia oil on the end grain before making the cut. This softens the fibers and allows clean paring on soft woods like fir and cedar. You still need sharp chisels, and don't pare too much at a time. The oil will eventually evaporate if you want to apply glue to the joint.

[Steve Juhasz]

rounded tenons to fit your drilled holes are a practical solution

[Jim Neeley]

Two points:

1. Sharpness is the key to hand ww-ing. Find someone near you who is really good with hand tools and get them to let you try a hand plane and chisel of theirs, so you know what sharp really is. Sharp should let you cut through hardwood end grain nearly effortlessly. Unless you get to try it, its tough to know when you get there. I believe 98+% of woodworkers never do... I ended up having to travel to take a hands-om class with a master to know what its like and learn to get it in a minute or so at the stones. Its truly an amazing feeling.

2. When cutting soft woods that like to crush, to get an ortimal cut, you may need to grind a chisel bevel down near 20*, together with uber-sharp. You may still get a small amount of crushing but it should be middle. One important thing with a 20* bevel is that you cannot beat on it or the tip will fold over; you must be gentle. Additionally 20* likely wont hold up in hard wood (even walnut and cherry) so you might consider custom-grinding a couple of chisels to this low angle and keep them for soft wood rather than giving up the chisel length required to swap bevels back and forth.

Jim

[Frank Drew]

I'm in the midst of making a bench out of redwood with M&T joints. I made the mortises with a plunge router and a spiral upcut bit.

Then I round off the tenons to match the oval shape of the mortise.Bob

Since this isn't the Neanderthal Forum (hand tools only), this would be my advice, too. It's how I made mortises before I got a horizontal slot mortiser and I stayed with the spiral upcut bits.

[Ellen Benkin]

Cutting softwood with a dull chisel is just like trying to slice a tomato with a dull knife. The result is mush. Before investing in more tools you need to sharpen the ones you have.