Hi everyone,
I’m a beginner in woodworking and have been learning to make mortise and tenon joints with hand tools only. While I’ve made some decent progress with tenons, I’m running into significant issues with mortises.
Here’s what I’m doing:
- I start by drilling out the bulk of the material using a drill.
- Then, I try to clean out the mortise using my chisels.
I’m working with white oak and have sharp chisels (though not dedicated mortising chisels). My issue is that I’m finding it really difficult to remove the waste material. I end up banging the chisels much harder than I’d like, yet I only manage to take out tiny amounts of material with each attempt (siehe photos). It’s frustrating, and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Replies
if you're going to drill, you're going to want to aim at paring sides - like the cuts are chisel back parallel to the length of the wood - you'll find it far easier to remove material that way than chisel back perp. to length.
also, give yourself a longer mortise to practice with and try it without drilling to get a feel for the chisel. Reality is if you're not drilling, a mortise chisel of some type will make things a lot easier - but some of them - like the IBC and other types like that with no side relief (just big fat square) are not something I'd want. I don't have good advice - the narex mortise chisels have a nice profile, but the basic narex austempered steel is lacking - it's hardware store hardness. You could do worse than that, though.
I ended up just making my own and that's not a realistic option for most people.
The lack of anything but sash mortise chisels and oval bolstered for the most part suggests to me that mortising was one of the first operations (raised panels included in this) in the middle to late 1800s to be eliminated by mechanized solutions. Panel raising planes seem to have disappeared around the same time, and someone who knows more about woodworking history mentioned that was due to the rise of mechanized shops making door panels to sell to cabinet shops. If you've ever raised four solid door panels neatly by hand, it becomes pretty apparent why they'd be an easy target just like mortises.
at any rate, if you're drilling, you want to do as much as possible with the drill and most would probably only drill an initial hole. if you are chopping mortises with a proper chisel, drilling will offer no benefit on smaller mortises, but it will eliminate the wood that's there that a mortise chisel is interacting with. The purpose of the chisel isn't just to cut into the wood, but to be used bevel down on the wood side to penetrate and split wood free from the sides of the mortise at the same time.
If you attempt to do this into a drilled mortise, you just get a bunch of random waste binding teh chisel in the cut.
I think I understand what you mean. When I drilled the holes and left a lot of material on the sides of the mortise, it became quite challenging to chop through such a large amount. Perhaps I should try drilling as close to the sides as possible.
The reason I haven’t bought a mortising chisel yet is that I wanted to minimize the material that needs to be removed with chiseling. Since I work in an apartment building, it's important to avoid creating unnecessary noise.
First, start with the mortise. Easier to size a tenon to an opening than to nail a mortise for a tenon. (My opinion)
Second, drill pilot holes at the drill press to keep your mortise drill on track. This also lets you drill overlapping holes if you DO NOT use regular wandering twist bits. You need bits with a guide point that protrudes farther than the cutting flutes. Brad point or even better Forstners. Use a bit just a little smaller than the chisel you intend to use for the narrow ends.
Third, use a knife or cutting gauge to scribe your layout DEEPLY into the surface. Aim to leave just a touch of meat inside the lines while chopping and remove it last when paring.
If you are using bench chisels go slow. I have snapped more than one trying to wiggle it free. +1 on the Narex MC profile, they don't get jammed up like square/flat ones.
All good advice above. I will just add, how sharp are the chisels and how good are you at sharpening? Sharpening is the gateway activity to woodworking. If I had to recommend only one source for how to sharpen, it would be the book “Sharpen This” by Lost Art Press.
Don’t think I saw this in the above advice, but you should be aiming to remove very small slithers at a time. How undersized was the drill bit to mortise layout line? You are paring, not chopping so much. So 1/16” would be a big cut here. From tear out in the pics, I’d say you could get sharper. There’s a bit more to diagnose but just keep practicing. And like someone said above, focus on the areas cutting long grain. Paring endgrain just sucks so leave that for the end so there is minimal left.
I just cut about (12) 3/4 x 2 1/2 mortises. I'm not an expert, this my recent experience, you are no alone. I used a drill press, a fence with the wood clamped so it couldn't move. I scored the outline deeply and used a Forstner bit. I drilled as much and as cleanly as I could, drilling is easy. I have Old Buck chisels, nothing special, but they are very sharp, with a primary and secondary bevel. I have a Veritas MK.II honing jig.
I can shave wood inside the mortise without a mallet, shave very little at a time. It is easier on everybody. That was pointed out in another post. Just know you have to do a fair amount of this to get better. No magic, damnit. I am learning hand dovetails now, it currently looks like I use a chainsaw.
Hi Kurt, since you are just learning DTs, have a look at this:
https://www.tailspintools.com/pov-tailspin-tools-video-request/ ...When I was learning I was frustrated and thought there should be a way to work without the transfer step, so I created one.
You are not alone in finding it a challenge to cut mortises by hand, and white oak can be especially challenging at first. Lots of good suggestions here, and I will offer still another approach by suggesting you first learn to cut your mortises with chisel and mallet alone. Once the mortise is well laid out, with a sharp and distinct knife wall, the initial attack is with considerably less force than one is inclined to use, gently and patiently excavating out the first 1/8" or so, while establishing 4 clean and precise walls. The degree of force from the mallet can increase as the mortise deepens.
In my opinion, the two most helpful instructional resources for this are videos from Marc Adams and Paul Sellers (Paul uses white oak in his demo). Each takes a different approach, but between the two of them you can indeed learn the technique in a fashion that works well for you. Links are below. I learned on inexpensive blue-handled Marples chisels, kept very sharp, as you say yours are. I used a small block of wood to learn to automatically align my chisel for 90º cuts. It takes practice and more practice, but the results will be rewarding.
Once you are pleased with your technique, and especially if cutting a lot of mortises, you can hog out some of the waste with a drill, though at the risk of finding yourself on the slippery slope of starting to lust after a hollow-chisel mortising machine.
Marc Adams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohVYmDh2UME
Paul Sellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBodzmUGtdw
That sellers video is loaded with useful tips for consistency.
Great video
'Morning S,
You say this:
"I’m.....learning to make mortise and tenon joints with hand tools only.
Here’s what I’m doing:
I start by drilling out the bulk of the material using a drill."
This begs the question: what's your underlying motive in adopting the "hand tools only" approach, especially since your use of a drill press seems to contradict this?
This isn't a criticism but rather a suggestion that you first clarify what it is you want to learn in WW skills and why.
If your underlying motive is to acquire traditional hand tool skills to emulate the style of traditional WW going back a century or four then you need to buy and learn to use mortise chisels. No drill press needed then.
If you want to learn a wider range of skills - hand tool skills like paring with a chisel but also the skills to accurately set up and use machines, you might then consider what the best machine tool is to drill out a mortise start-hole. It isn't the drill press, its a router plus a jig.
There's another skill to be learnt there, then - jig making! :-)
Use of a router plus a jig will give you a very neat and accurately-sized hole that only needs the round end squared with a paring chisel. You still get to set up and use a chisel for paring but you'll be far less likely to end up with a chewed-up trench as per your photos.
If you have a drill press that's up to using and end mill rather than a Forstner bit, you could try this:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2024/11/01/made-you-look-drill-press-mortises
but most drill press don't like sideways pressure on the chuck, which might come adrift.
*****
As others have mentioned, any chisel used to pare a mortise hole to perfection needs to be truly (very) sharp. Sharpening is, as Joe mentions, a gateway skill. Best also, perhaps, to use a true paring chisel with a 20 degree cutting angle rather than a standard bench chisel with a 25 - 30 degree cutting angle.
But maybe those mortising chisels could be what you really want to master? As Mr Weaver mentions, digging a nice hole with a mortise chisel is never a trivial job, especially if there are multiples of them needed. Personally I do occasionally use the mortise chisel but only for a very limited number of mortises, with just two being my preference. It's tedious work.
I use Narex mortise chisels which are certainly up to my mortising jobs but may need more resharpening if the number of mortise holes needed goes up. I read that the old fashioned pig-sticker style Iles mortise chisels are very good indeed but you can't buy them new now. I would advise that you avoid those from the likes of Two Cherries and MHG (European makes) as those I bought were very badly configured, with skewed sides that made them impossible to sharpen aright.
For techniques, I've never found a better method than that portrayed in the FWW video series of Chris Gouchner making a Shaker cupboard. It involves beginning with one drilled hole (with a brace & bit :-) ) and explains exactly how the mortise chisel works, including the necessarily sharp corners that scrape the mortise walls smooth - one part of mortising rarely mentioned in most instructional vids or books.
In fact, that video series is aimed at making the whole piece only with hand tools. Many kinds of tools and operations are very well demonstrated and explained.
I ordered a 10 mm Forstner bit and a 12 mm Narex Morticing Chisel yesterday, so I'll give your recommendations a try. I'll experiment with just the chisel to see if it's better to skip the drill press entirely.
you'll know ahead of time the heat treat process narex uses limits how hard they can get other than richter chisels. So, i'd start with a secondary bevel of 35. if the edge doesn't hold up, round the tip freehand on something really fine just a bit further - same sentiment as the other thread about chisels - often time a gross -to-use chisel is 1 or 2 degrees away from being delightful and the lack of a trip to cover those two degrees keeps us from knowing it.
Thanks, I will try it.
I did try putting little more than 35 degrees and it works wonders! The feel is just different and the bevel actually cuts. Will try doing some more mortices... Thanks.
You may find that drilling followed by the use of a mortise chisel will be another source of frustration. Mortise chisels are intended to do the whole job, not just the cleanup.
I work in White oak often. It's a rather unforgiving wood. I have the best luck drilling out the mortises with a brad point drill and following up with bench chisels to pare the sides back. I use the blue tape trick (https://www.finewoodworking.com/2014/04/01/simple-tape-trick-for-tight-fitting-through-mortises) to help with the accuracy, as White Oak is notoriously hard to mark. When you pare the sides and ends take tiny slices of wood. If your chisels are sharp and the cuts are light you won't need to bash the chisels at all. A light tapping should work. If it doesn't, take less of a bite. If that doesn't improve things, re-evaluate what you think sharp actually is. Learning to mortise by hand is a process that takes time and practice. Maybe do some training exercises on a more forgiving wood to get the hang of it?
Why not try an easier wood? Get some cherry or poplar.
Ha, ha, ha!
I use the drill and chop method primarily because I don't have a mortising machine. They make attachments for a standard drill press, but they seem like a pain to attach and remove, so I've avoided that. M. Pecovich uses the drill and chop method especially when the mortise is in the center of a wide piece and he has some great tips for making quick work of it.
The first is to use your marking guage to score your mortise lines, drill the ends, and then drill out along the score lines. When removing the waste, you have to square up the end grain first, and then chop out the little ridges left from the drilling, a small amount at at a time. If you try to take it all out, as you know, you'll not be very successful leaving clean straight sides. If you're making through mortises, you'll work both sides halfway so you don't blow out the faces when you chop through.
I use the Narex mortise chisels to clean up the sides and bottoms and they work well for that, but as mentioned earlier, they are soft and will need a far amount of re-sharpening.
Well a drill isnt hand tools only.
Try a router instead.
And not a single one but a multi? Get it? Har....monday joke.
I used a multirouter for my first M&T joints on a one-off project. Not a strength of the machine and maybe began the snowball that resulted in forging my own mortise chisels to get exactly what I wanted.
but I found two that Ward and Payne made for the first time a few weeks ago after only 15 years of browsing. Basically a smaller version of the pigsticker profile including the taper from the bottom to the top.
When I first started in woodworking, I used a self-centering doweling jig to drill the holes for the mortise, then cleaned it up with a chisel as you are doing. Use the appropriate size hole in the dowel jig for the mortise you want. A dowel jig centers the hole and keeps it parallel to the face, and you can remove the majority of the waste this way.
Several thoughts bouncing around in my brain this pm:
1. I think cutting mortises well by hand is more difficult than dovetails.
2. To help wean myself from using a desktop mortiser machine (which does work very well), I bought a proper mortise chisel. Yes, you can cut a mortise with a bevel edge chisel but I find it a bit easier with a proper mortise chisel. At least, I worry less about bending or damaging the chisel. Plenty of vintage “pig sticker” mortise chisels out there in 1/4” or 5/16” which are likely the most two popular sizes.
keep in mind that most mortise chisels are designed to rotate at the top of the bevel inside the mortise. The pigstickers sometimes have very tall cross sections and sometimes don't. The ones that have a tall cross section and very long bevels don't really come into their own until the mortises are well deeper than the curvature on the top of the chisel - like 2" or more deep and enough length to rotate easily.
I've got some of them, and had the ray iles version (shorter in height than many old ones) but sold those off. The primary set that i have now is IH sorby and some of the rounded tops of the bevels terminate 1 1/2 inches from the edge, so even a 2" deep mortise is really not what they were designed for. what they do well is once the top part is buried, the curvature allows you to drive them into the corners of the mortise, which most people struggle to get to, hammer them in, and then pull back a tiny amount until they're not totally tight and sever a huge amount of wood from the walls of the mortise in front of them with a routine push and a "click". I have ridden them in hardwood mrortises taking half an inch of split wood out instead of little slivers at a time, and marveled, but it's so uncommon to make mortises deep enough in cabinet work to make use of the tall ones. It seems to me they were a deep mortise production tool, and very specialized if they are tall. the action that they will do deep allows you to ride the bevel through the length of a mortise and then work them steeper and steeper into the corner and still pop the wood loose until they are bevel forward but working vertically on the last cut, cutting triangles out of the wood vs. cutting an even sliver from top to bottom.
Thanks for this detailed info.
Watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohVYmDh2UME
The only quibble I have is mortising in the vise.
He is also mortising for perfectly clean margins -- like you might see on through mortise and tenons in an Arts and Crafts piece.
There's nothing wrong with drilling waste, but you've clearly lost control of the process when paring the walls and in keeping the margins nice and crisp.
He's using a Berg bench chisel in the video FWIW. Any pedestrian chisel will work, but you might have to touch up more often. You don't need to go shopping. I've never seen a "true" mortise chisel as wide as the joint it appears you're trying to cut anyway. So, you're left with using either a straight-sided firmer or bevel-edged bench chisel and it frankly doesn't matter one whit which you use.
Mortising oak isn't necessarily easy and you'll want to cut a four-shouldered tenon to hide bruising anyway. It's also possible you have a piece of punky, poorly dried wood. It should be cutting more cleanly. We have to take your word that your chisels are sharp, but I suspect that they are not. Honing on high grit media guarantees nothing.
that technique would drive me to use power tools.
Ditto
Marc over at WoodWhisperer recently had a live stream where they show some of the footage for the Hand Tool Course with Frank Strazza. The clip that they show is just what you are asking. Chopping a mortise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxEAB8HsqjQ
These demonstrations behind glass miss the mark as their is no material (other than glass) on one wall of the mortise.
the effect of missing a side is something anyone here can imitate by chopping a mortise depth in a piece of wood that's wide, and then chopping the same width more next to it noticing how the wood releases on the second pass. the difference is stark - not something people addicted to watching these mortise behind glass videos will grasp as they ooh and ahh about the speed....until trying it. It's not something I set up on purpose- it's part of the process making planes. the first mortise is more effortful and then removing the rest of the material adjacent is very low effort.
Uncanny, also, how one person will cut a mortise against glass, someone will see the first person getting attention (presumably subscriptions, selling something, whatever) and then suddenly 10 people are doing it in the next year.
I guess at least Frank has a big library of nice stuff that he's made. The pieces paul sellers claims look suspiciously like Frank may have done a large amount of the work on them, too.
It bears repeating that the Marc Adams demonstration is of a mortise with perfect margins. If yours will be covered by the tenon's shoulder, then feel free to whack away and tolerate some bruising. There is still some technique to be gleaned, and it's not as slow as it appears as you won't be doing it on camera and narrating it to a room full of learners.
I use the drill/paring technique a lot. I have found “chopping” just doesn’t work. I am finishing a stool in maple. When you chop, you will invariably encounter “cross” grain. Chopping tends to create too much tear out for my taste.
I recently got a Narex mortising chisel, but I find the steel far too soft for my liking. In comparison, I have some older Kirschen chisels and previously owned vintage Swedish Eskilstuna chisels, which were significantly harder.
While the Narex chisel gets sharp—sharp enough to shave every hair off my forearm with light pressure—it feels like I'm trying to drive a plastic chisel into steel when working with it. Granted, I’m working with white oak, but still...
I’m not sure if I’m not striking hard enough with the hammer, if the wood is just too hard, or if the chisel itself is the issue. I can't quite figure it out.
Although the oak I've mortised has been "European" (possibly English or even from Switzerland) its at least as tough as American white oak. The Narex mortise chisels (at 35 degrees plus a couple of degrees micro-bevel) have certainly coped, even though one did need honing back to full scary-sharp after doing half a dozen 8mm X 30mm mortises 28mm deep. (I'm not convinced mortise chisels really need to be scary sharp, mind).
Have yours been sharpened on a grinder wheel and got too hot? If they feel like a "plastic chisel" that seems rather more than just a steel that's a little less hard than a Kirschen. If a steel in a mortise chisel gets too hard the risk is that it'll fracture under the blows of a mallet rather than the edge bend.
No, the chisel's bevel was approximately 25 degrees. I flattened the back (which wasn’t too difficult since the steel is softer than I prefer) and added a secondary bevel at 35 degrees. No grinding mashine. I used 600, 1000, and 3000-grit diamond stones, finishing with a strop.
Yes, there might bit a little rounding off because I did sharpening by hand, but I don't think it makes it much worse.
The Narex mortis chisels do come with a 25 degree bevel. Lots of my reading about mortising by hand suggested that 35 or even 40 degree cutting edges were the norm, basically because a lot of force is being applied to that edge when malleting. The chisel is a chopper rather than a chisel.
I reground mine to have a 35 degree main bevel. I admit that part of the reason for doing so was to play with me (then) new grinder, a Sorby ProEdge. :-)
In theory putting a 35 degree microbevel on a 25 degree main bevel should provide more resilience .... but does it in a mortise chisel? Is there enough "meat" behind that microbevel in the 25 degree main bevel to absorb the inclination of the edge to bend or fracture?
I've no idea .... but perhaps someone else does have not just an idea but some experience-based or even scientific knowledge on the matter?
I will try putting 40 degress main bevel and no micro bevel. Maybe I miss something, but what is the point of micro bevel on the soft mortice chisel which is fairly easy and fast to sharpen?
A large and single flat bevel to be resharpened is always going to take a long time, as you need to take a significant amount off the whole bevel to get the edge sharp again. Microbevels do speed the resharpening process whatever the steel or the angle of the main bevel.
"Micro" can (and perhaps should) mean literally that. Many call a secondary bevel of 1/16th of an inch "micro" but such a secondary bevel doesn't need to be anywhere near that wide. A much smaller (genuinely micro) bevel is easier to hone and even resharpen ..... although in the latter case I admit I use a sharpening guide to hold the tool, set up in exactly the same way as the time before.
The Veritas guide, with it's gizmo for setting the projection of the blade from the guide, is very good for that .... as long as one remembers to set the eccentric wheel thingy the same too (the feature that does auto-increases of one or two degrees to facilitate the making of micro bevels).
If you are paring the sides of your mortises, I think your sharpening process is inadequate. view this series:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/hand-tools/sharpening-systems-explained
Since the early nineties I used water stones 800, 1200, 8000. I always gauged sharpness by shaving hairs on the back of my hand and arm.
This series convinced me to migrate to the routine Mr. Van Dyke details. I now do 4k, 8k and finally 16k ceramic stones. When I first viewed this series I thought 16k was just stupid. Now I am sold. I use a variety of jigs to assure consistent angles. I had no idea you could get my chisels/blades as sharp as I now do. It’s CRAZY.
Paring (taking ultra-fine and precise slices of wood off something) certainly benefits from a sharp chisel - as does carving, judging by the many vids I've recently watched about making relief carvings, which involves a huge amount of paring, often very precisely.
My own experience with cabinet-making paring chisels, though, suggests that a more acute bevel has as similar effect, perhaps, in easing & making accurate the paring process. A long blades straight chisel with a 20 degree bevel rather than the usual 25 - 30 of bench chisels can take very fine and precise cuts even though I sharpen to no more than 8000-10,000.
Most carvers I've watched honing so so with something around 8000 grit or less (often a translucent Arkansas slip stone). Would they benefit from the 16000 grit? Few seem to think so.
I suppose it may be possible to sharpen all chisel types even more with a 16000 grit substance but what are the advantages? Perhaps a 25 - 30 degree edge so-sharpened might be more resilient than a 20 degree edge sharpened to just 8000, so one could risk using the bench chisel as just that, even with a mallet, rather than confining it to paring by hand only, as one does with the 20 degree bevel long paring chisels.
The long length of a true paring chisel is meant to give a greater degree of control of the angle a cut is made at. I believe that they were used mostly by pattern makers, who were essentially carvers of very complex models in wood made according to very complex blueprints of proposed designs of parts that were eventually made in metal.
A bench chisel made ultra sharp for paring a mortise wall would, though, perhaps be better with a shorter length? Mortise holes can be awkward to get a tool into.
******
A mortise chisel, though .... its not made to pare but to chop. Is there, then, any point ('scuse pun) in making it sharp to 16000 grit? The malleted chopping action would surely break down the ultra-sharp edge after one blow.
“[Deleted]”
I would never bother to attempt to use 16k stones on carving tools or on any tool I am using for chopping. When I pare, I don’t take ultra thin slices either. I was simply referring to the process starideda refers to in his mortise routine. Additionally I don’t know how you maintain a sharp edge on carving tools without a strop.
I recently started chip carving. I have been doing it for 16 months. After the initial sharpening, I my knife hasn’t touched a stone. I strop every 15-30 minutes. Conversely, I have found stropping chisels and plane blades doesn’t accomplish much.