Replies

1. 
   wamara | Sep 04, 2002 12:21am | #1

   IMO, for what its worth, you would be well served to bore the holes and clean out the waste with a bench chisel. Especially if you're new to mortise and tenon joinery, doing it this way at first can be very instructive. The second option would be to purchase a mortising chisel sized to the mortise you are creating. Marples make them as well as some other tool makers. Using a mortising chisel is also instructive as you must make sure the chisel is at a right angle to the surface of the material before you strike. You wedge out the waste. I have made many hundreds of sucessful mortises with both these methods. As a matter of fact I resisted getting a machine to do this work until just recently when it became clear that my work load could use some help. I got a bench mortiser. I think that you can cut your 8 mortises by hand much quicker than setting up a jig for a router. Now, if you're intending to make a number of benches, that might be a different matter. But even then I wouldn't be one to recommend a router for the job. I think the most important tools in mortise and tenon joinery are marking gauges and a good saw to make the tenons. I have a number of good power tools, but my choice for making tenons is a bowsaw fitted with a 6 tpi blade resharpened to a rip saw. I find the tenons are much trickier than the mortises, but to make them fit properly a good gauge is most important. One little tip that will help is that when marking the shoulders for your tenons use a sharp knife to score the line and then using a very sharp bench chisel pare out a bevel on the waste side of the score. This will give you a slight ledge against which to start your saw and will make for a nice clean joint. Good luck

   Wayne

2. 
   eddiefromAustralia | Sep 04, 2002 03:07am | #2

   http://www.gre.ac.uk/~eduweb/showcase/d&t/schools/resmat/woodjoints/index.htm

   I have another good primer at home, but here's a basic "how-to"

   Cheers, eddie

   
   

   ---

   Edited 9/3/2002 8:08:17 PM ET by eddie

1. 
   bill_1010 | Sep 04, 2002 06:51am | #3

   nothing wrong with a bench top drill press, some good bits and sharp chisels.  Practice makes perfect, and i still practice on joinery in my spare time and left overs.

   Bits and braces arent to be ignored either.

3. 
   Alan | Sep 05, 2002 05:50am | #4

   Wanda,

   A mortise chisel.  Chopping mortises the traditional way is lots of fun (at least for me) and it goes surprisingly fast.

   If you don't mind, a few pointers:

   Begin by getting just the one or two sizes you need for your project.  Resist the temptation to buy a set.  Most of my work is with stock that's rarely thicker than 6/4.  I don't remember ever using two of the chisels I got when I bought a set.  Had I taken my own advice I could have gotten fewer, but better quality chisels for the same dollars.

   Sharpen the chisel before you try to use it.  I put a thirty degree bevel on my mortising chisels; these aren't dainty tools.  If I'm  chopping into a real hard wood I will often put on an additional micro-bevel.

   If you don't have one, invest in a mortising gauge.  A gauge is absolutely the best and easiest way to avoid lay-out errors.  If you want you can file the teeth into a more knife-like shape.

   After you mark out the mortise, use a sharp utility knife--or any firm, sharp knife--and deepen the mark-out lines.  That helps reduce the chances of splintering the sides of the mortise.

   I almost always take a square and lightly clamp it to the stock.  This gives me a visual reference to help me keep the chisel straight.  Remember too that the critical angle is side to side; it doesn't really matter if the chisel isn't square to the length of the mortise (of course so long as it's not ridiculously out of square).

   Begin a little bit in from the end, an eighth or quarter inch or so.  Because you lever out the chips it's easy to foul up the ends if you try to cut to the line at first.

   With the bevel on the direction you'll be moving the chisel, give the chisel one good whack and then move on an eighth of an inch or so, and give just one more good whack at each new position.  The first whack won't penetrate very far because the wood has no place to go as the chisel tries to wedge it apart.  The second blow will go in farther, and so on.  When you near the other end, turn the chisel around and whack back to where you began--keeping a safe margin away from the end.  Depending on the wood and the size of the mortise, it's not uncommon for me to complete the heavy work with just one circuit.

   That's enough for now.  Sorry, but I do ramble on with little, or no, encouragement.

   Most important rule of all:  Have fun!

   Alan

1. 
   DP | Sep 05, 2002 05:49pm | #5

   Suggest you buy Peter Korn's book, "Working with Wood", published by Taunton.  It is a excellent tutorial on how to do basic operations, such as squaring and flattenigna board, cutting dovetails and using hand tools to make a mortise and tenon.  Even better if you can swing it is to take the basic woodworking course that he teaches at the institute for furniture craftsmanship.

4. 
   eddiefromAustralia | Sep 27, 2002 12:28pm | #6

   As promised. Sorry for the delay.

   Cheers, eddie

   http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/articles/mortiseandtenon.cfm

5. 
   jeffn7 | Sep 30, 2002 06:22pm | #7

   A good set of bench chisels will serve you well (Veritas has an excellent set for under $60... http://www.leevalley.com). Eventually, you will want to move up to a mortise chisel and a swan neck chisel for clearing the waste, these 2 specialty chisels earn their keep if you do a lot of this work.

   A dedicated mortiser isn't that big of an investment, about $240 on average. If you use it even a couple of times a month, it pays for itself (I just finished handrailing that featured over 200 mortises... I couldn't have done it in the timeframe I need to without this machine.)

6. 
   JHARDE02 | Oct 01, 2002 11:24pm | #8

   Just finished using my Delta mortiser again this weekend.  While it's great when you have lots of mortises to chop, it definitely leaves a rough interior surface that can't lend itself well to glue ups.  Of course you could clean up the interior with a chisel, but a plunge router is an awful good choice for mortises.  You can then just round over the tenon, or go with a loose tenon.

   An upcoming project of mine is a Greene & Greene dining room set.  The chairs will require angled tenons that I plan on making with my plunge router and a jig I'll put together.  I'll plunge both sides, then use a loose tenon.  Once you jig up, plung router mortises are extremely fast and clean.

   Regards,

   John

1. 
   BG | Oct 02, 2002 01:04am | #9

   Wanda,

   Not to disagree with anything that has been said, but working with a router to cut mortices and tenons is a piece of cake too.  The plunge router is even easier..with a guide attachment for depth and a jig for the length.  I worked on my workbench last night and did the whole job in about an hour...perfect fit.

1. 
   wanda20011 | Oct 04, 2002 04:04am | #10

   Hello ,

   I haven't checked out the posts in the forum lately. Too busy watching the baseball playoffs. LOL  I finally managed to read all the posts. :)

   Thanks to all the following people for their suggestions/advice......Eddie, Wanara, Alan, JeffN7 Jharde02 and BG.  Eddie I bookmarked the article on mortising from the woodworkers Journel.  Thank you for passing that along.

   I think I'm going to have to get better aqainted with my plunge router. I was just watching the Yankee Workshop on PBS. Norm Abram was cutting out dovetail joints using a router with a dovetail bit. I bet that contraption/jig cost a fortune. I've been reading up on the router.  I never realized you could use a router for so many jobs around the workshop. I've got to start practicing cutting some dadoes and rabbits with the router before I begin my next woodworking project. A Tower Bookshelf.  I sure would love to own a radial arm saw for cutting dadoes. Oh well I'm lucky enough to have a router. :)

   Wanda  Eastern Canada

1. 
   RSRose | Oct 04, 2002 04:53am | #11

   Wanda,

   1. Do yourself a big favor and do not go down the path of looking to the router to cut dovetail joints. Cut them by any other means. Cut them by hand. Cut them by using a bandsaw (great method), cut them by the table saw method described in FWW (see the video on the site). Do not think of Norm as a role model for this skill.

   2. Do not lust after a RAS and a dado blade for making dados. Bad. Very Bad. A router will serve much better.

   3. Last and most important, do not be seduced into the mindset that, "I can do anything there is to do with a router."

   Rich

1. 
   wamara | Oct 05, 2002 06:32am | #12

   Great advice.

   Wayne

2. 
   wanda20011 | Oct 05, 2002 05:15pm | #13

   Hello Rich Rose,

   Don't worry I would not spend a fortune on a radial arm saw. The table saw is much more useful. However radial arm saws are wonderful for cutting dados and rabbits. I used one in my woodworking class to build a workbench. That't the first and probably the last time I will ever use one. But what a job it did!

   I have no intention of cutting dovetails with a big fancy router jig.  I intend to use a backsaw/dovetail saw and marking guage. Much cheaper. LOL 

   I will have to check out the FWW video on how to cut dovetails using a tablesaw...... never thought of using a bandsaw to cut dovetails. I think the next serious tool I will add to my workshop will be a Delta 14 inch bandsaw. I'm in no rush to go out a purchase one just yet. Luckily for me my uncle has one.  Says he'd definitely recommend the Delta. He's taken apart his King Industrial bandsaw so many times he can do it in his sleep. :)  At least now I know how to change a blade on a bandsaw! He says he'd be lost without his bandsaw. Considers it his most valuable tool. He's always resawing.  I wouldn't have been able to build my chair without the bandsaw. How else would you cut a 30º bevel on the backbrace?

   Wanda

3. 
   RSRose | Oct 05, 2002 08:02pm | #14

   Wanda,

   My point about the RAS was not about spending a fortune on one. It's possible to get one at a reasonable price. As a cross-cutting saw dedicated to that purpose, a RAS is a very useful thing to have. My point was about using a dado blade in a RAS. To reapeat my original message, bad, very bad.

   About cutting dovetails with a bandsaw. Take a look at "The Bandsaw Book" by Lonnie Bird, The Taunton Press. It's an excellent book for its topic and, among other specific techniques, explains dovetail joint making on the saw very nicely.

   It's good to have several perspectives on performing any task (dovetail joint making in this case). There is no ONE WAY to do anything. It's not necessary to master them all, but seeing the thing from the perspective of those different approaches makes you a better craftsman at the one technique that you settle down with. I have a friend who can cut dovetails by hand faster, and more accurately by hand than I can by any machine method. (He can also carve a magnificent horse's head out of a solid block of mahogany with a pocket knife without a single reference line on the wood or a reference model. I would be hard-pressed to make a recognizable carving using templates, guides, models and every carving tool in existence.)

   As far as dovetail joints with a router, get fairly good with any other technique then make them with a router and template. You'll then be able to appreciate router and template dovetails as a legitmate technique, but limited and constrained, expedient for large runs.

   However, the tablesaw technique allows as fine a control over design and layout as hand cutting, adds precision that is a little easier to obtain vs hand cutting and is as fast or faster than router/template for production.

   Rich