Mortise Chisels

Re: Mortise Chisels

Christof Hartge

>Hello Patrick,

I won't competite with all those wisdom assembled in schools and books. And of course you can do thicknessing with a smoothing plane also. If this argument is satisfying, you don't need a scrub and a Jack, nor a jointer.

Our ancestors took some labor and made these chisels. What for?

The two mortise chisel, 6&8mm, were one of the best investions I made in woodorking. They are much sturdier, much easier hold at an right angle and work much quicker.

So my conclusion: Buy them. Not a whole set, but the sizes you your projected mortises are.

I must agree

bill tindall

>Over the past few years I have moved from machine to hand tool operations for some things. Of these, mortising with a mortise chisel has been the easiest to learn to do successfully. From the get go I have not failed to make successful mortises with a mortise chisel, I think mainly because the critical dimension is fixed by the chisel width.

Amateur woodworkers, defined by people that aren't perfoming an operation weekly over a period of several years, differ from the woodworking professional in at least two fundamental ways. First, operations that require a lot of practice to successfully master are going to be difficult to execute by the average amateur who may do such an operation once or twice a year. I would put "pins first" for dovetails and mortises without mortise chisel in this catagory. Hence, amateurs need to adapt techniques that may be less productive and may require specialized tools, but these techniques need to be easy to learn. A technique or approach well suited to a professional, past or present, simply may not be practical for the amateur of average skill.

Second, amateurs usually do not need to make tool purchases based on a return on the tool investment consideration. So, we tend to be less reluctant to buy tools, if we perceive that they help with an operation.

Bottom line is that a mortise chisel enables me to handily chop successful mortises. I can afford the few chisels I need, and it mattters not what a struggling cabinet maker used in 1750 unless I want to recreate this lifestyle.

Re: Mortise Chisels

Chris Knight

>I second (or rather third) the point. There is no comparison between chopping a mortise (especially a deep one in a hard wood) with a proper mortise chisel and an ordinary bench chisel. The former is a delight to use, the latter always feeling "overworked".

Re: Mortise Chisels

Adam Cherubini, NJ

>Hi Pat,

From what I can tell, mortise chisels were ubiquitous in furniture maker's kits in the 18th and most of the 19th century.

When furnituremaking moved from a master's bench in a craftshop to an immigrant's work station in a factory (in the early 19th century), much was lost. The authors of those books likely never learned to cut mortises by hand, never had to, or both.

The specific techniques of 18th and early 19th century craftshops remain a mystery to us to this day. I certainly don't have the answers. I am especially suspect of turn of the (20th) century writers. In my opinion, they produced some of the worst furniture ever made! (I know there are exceptions).

One way to approach an answer (regarding how mortises were made, what tools are required)is to initiate another hand tool challenge project that requires several mortises. A joint stool would be a perfect choice.

Adam

Me too

David Miller from Iowa

>We're all saying about the same thing. Just want to add that in my mispent youth I was a Normite (although he wasn't on then) until I watched a very young Mr. Underhill use a mortise chisel. Went out to the shop and dug one out I had gotten as a freebie in an auction box, and gave it a try. The quick, professional results the mortise chisel gives, even for the inexperienced, was a key push for me down the slippery slope.

Re: Mortise Chisels

Patrick Gibbons, mcgdogm, TX

>My question was made primarily to illicit thought about mortise chisels. I'm building bunk beds for the boys using a combination of hard and soft maple. When finished, I will have hand-chopped 164 mortises, most of which (132) are 3/8" x 3/8" x 2" for slats. No tenons on these as the slats fit, unglued, in the mortises. Today I chopped 11 in under 2 hours. This time included sharpening the chisel and marking out the mortise locations as well as paring the sides and fitting the slates. I use a 271 router to flatten the bottoms. The chisel I'm using is a Sorby registered mortise chisel. Yes the edge folds a bit but I chop 11 mortises which takes care of one rail with one sharpening. The sources I'm looking at from the turn of the 20th century imply that workers used unbeveled firmer chisels which seem to me to be akin to my registered chisels. We've had discussions here recently where modern wisdom on what is necessary was questioned concerning saws. I thought it would be interesting to examine chisels. Much like my recent post on the cost of replacement plane blades compared to the price of a chisel which some of you may remember. Que sera sera.