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Mortise Chisel

803 views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  woodnthings 
#1 ·
Hello, I am looking for a decent, reasonably priced, Mortise chisel set. Any recommendations?
 
#3 ·
#5 ·
There is a difference between paring chisels and mortising chisels that makes a big difference if you truly plan on mortising with the chisels. A mortising chisel is much thicker and has flat sides. Being thicker, it is much stronger and intended for prying. It's flat sides also help you keep the chisel straight as you clean out the mortise. If you intend to chop mortises by hand, both of these design features will make a huge difference in your successes chopping out mortises. The right tool for the right job always makes a difference.

I've been there, but now do all of my mortising using a router and spiral bit. I can get better and more accurate mortises much faster using a router and a guide with a spiral bit. I now also have a Leigh FMT Pro jig, but I had great success before getting this jig, by cutting matching mortises in both mating pieces using my router, and then making "floating tenon" stock using my table saw and planer to get the tenon thickness correct. It can be done using just the table saw, if you don't have a planer. Just get the thickness as close as you can, and then rub the tenon on sandpaper to get the right fit. I make up tenon stock to the required tenon thicknesses, and then just cut them to size to fit the mortises, as I needed them. 2x the mortise depth minus about 1/8" is the best tenon length for floating tenons. Your dry fit should be a light friction fit, enough to keep the joint from falling apart, but not tight enough to require pounding with a fist or hammer to put together dry. I always made my tenons with square sides to fit the flat side dimensions of the mortise. There is no need to make them fit the round ends of the mortise. Leave the half round mortise ends as a place for the excess glue to go. The mortise and tenon strength comes from the quality of fit of the flat sides and the glue used.

An FMT jig makes beautiful matching mortise and tenon joints that are so accurate that multiple mortises and tenons of the same size can be interchanged, and all will fit perfectly, since there is a jig adjustment that allows for the exact mortise and tenon match fit, and it's very repeatable, but the jig is quite expensive. You can get joints that are just as easy to make and just as strong using the "Floating Tenon" technique that I described above, and if you already have a router, bit, and table saw there is nothing additional to purchase.

Charley
 
#6 ·
I second the router for making mortises!

Even though I have a Robert Sorby mortise chisel set and a Powermatic hollow chisel mortiser, I ended up making a self-centering router jig for my 30 some odd mortises on this Mission quilt rack:
https://www.woodworkingtalk.com/members/woodnthings-7194/albums/mission-quilt-rack/





For tenons I used my bandsaw with two fence settings and stop blocks. ..... couldn't be easier. Once the test piece met the dimension, I just made all the cuts in the same manner. Then I switched to the other setting and made the final cuts.
 
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