Monday, July 31, 2017

Chopping Mortises

The Moravian Work bench requires a number of large (wide) mortises. In the video Will Myers uses the drill and pare technique for all but the four small (common size) mortises. While I've never been a fan of drill and pare I decided to use it on the cross leg mortise. Four of those suckers are enough to convince me I'm still not a fan.  Even the last one was not easier or better than the first. For the long stretcher mortises I've gone back to my standard chop the sucker out with a pig sticker. For these because they are so wide I'm using my widest mortise chisel and chopping a mortise on each side of the mortise then chopping out the waste left in the middle. In effect because it is a through mortise chopping four mortises and then cleaning up the middle. The first one took a little over thirty minutes to chop and fit, including time spent wiping sweat off my face and glasses. It was over 105F at the time.  Much faster with less set up time and cleaner better fitting mortises.

Some day I will learn to stick with what works. BTW, the late great Guy Clark had a song about what works. I'm not sure of the reason but that part of West Texas over a few years period produced some great singer song writers, from Guy Clark, to Roy Orbison, to Buddy Holly.

Damn, I almost caught that squirrel....Anyway, morning should be cool enough to get the other three mortises done. Except for some clean up and making the tusks the base of the bench will be finished. Then it's waiting on the vise screw I ordered a couple of weeks ago, come on UPS girl you are holding up progress.

9 comments:

  1. I think it is all what you are used to. I didn't have a pigsticker when I was learning to make mortises and I did have a drill press, so drill and pare was the way to go and it worked well for me. I think it takes substantially more time though.

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  2. Ken have you ever tried the Paul Sellers way of using a bench chisel? When I make my bench I'll be facing the same thing of 1" mortises to chop. BTW like the solution of twin mortises and chopping the web out.

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  3. Anonymous3:21 AM

    It seems you used the technique shown here:
    https://hyvelbenk.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/hovelbenken-i-mariestad-er-pa-fotene/
    Wouldn't it be less work using a narrow chisel for the two side mortise and then the wider one to remove the waste between?
    Sylvain

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  4. My preferred method as always been using a pigsticker. Love the form of that chisel, and banging stuff around is therapeutic :-)
    Squirrel got away heh? Where is Rudy when you need him :-)

    Bob and Rudy the squirrel chaser

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  5. Andy,

    I agree 100%, if I had spent most of my time drilling and paring I expect I would be complaining about how much harder chopping with a pig sticker is. I also agree if you include set up, if any, chopping is faster but I'm not sure that is correct.

    ken

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  6. Ralph,

    I have and on small mortises I think it works better and a little quicker than a pig sticker. Mostly because of little need to change chisels to finish and easier to work inside the mortise.

    The mortises were sized to my 1 1/2" bench chisel (close to 35mm( and at first I thought about using it but as deep as these were I defaulted to the double mortise with the pig sticker. I figured maybe a little more work and slower but safer that way.

    ken

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  7. Sylvain,

    I couldn't find the translate button and I'm a typical American, I only speak Texan. But looking at the photos my guess is you are correct. My experience with pig stickers aka English Bolster Chisels is the wider ones are easier to work in the mortise. Before I finish I may try the 1/4: one to see if it is easier.

    ken

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  8. Bob,

    There is satisfaction in the process, tap, tap, lever, tap, tap, lever, amazing how fast it goes if you do not go all Conan on 'em. BTW, these have an added flip, they are angled 15 degrees top to bottom because of the leg angle so the ends are chopped following a reference line on the side.

    My two were worthless, Sam was asleep and Maggie was dropping her ball at my feet.

    ken

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  9. Anonymous11:59 AM

    I don't speak Norwegian either. Google translation from (woodworking) Norwegian to my mother language (French) is poor. On the picture, he is using an 8mm (about 5/16) pigstick but propose to use anything between 8 and 12 mm.

    Sylvain

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