Thread: chisel mortiser

Originally Posted by apricotripper

.....wondering how much guts its got. Want 1/2" cuts. I think its got 1 3/4Hp motor.

Worried its too much of a toy, and bog down all the time. or maybe good enough. Appreciate any thoughts. ta.

Jake - I had the early Carbatec model - it had all sorts of deficiencies, but lack of power wasn't one of them. It is only driving a 1/2" auger bit with a 1/2" chisel. It has no power-wasting belts or gearboxes & so that part doesn't take a lot of grunt. YOU do the grunting, plunging the chisel. Tough woods & a slightly dull chisel may take quite a bit of grunt for a deep plunge. That machine was used very heavily for a couple of years, but I finally got fed-up with the crude cam-operated plunge feed and the even cruder column that allowed the head to move out of set too easily.

I upgraded to a small Delta, which I'm happy with - not the most elegant tool on the market, but solid enough for heavy amateur or light industrial use, and the dovetailed sliding mechanism & rack & pinion feed are a vast improvement.

The machine you refer to is a big improvement over the first model. It has much the same features as the Delta. The Delta doesn't have those slide-out lateral supports & the two sliding rollers to hold the workpiece against the fence. They are good ideas, & if they work well you should find them quite a plus. The most important thing with these machines in my view is having the chisels well-polished & sharp, & the auger bit sharp & set with the right amount of clearance (otherwise the chips jam or get scrunched through a too-narrow gap which powders them & they don't feed up the auger but jam within the shaft of the chisel). A nicely-polished chisel plunges easier and doesn't jam in the wood when you try to extract it.

With everything set up & going well, they dig out very clean mortices, very quickly, without all the noise & dust of a screaming router. I like them for that & the quick setup. I bought my first one because I had a lot of multi-paned bookcase doors & suchlike to build. On its first morning, despite its shortcomings, the old machine reduced the time to build a pair of 6-paned doors from two days to a morning. I reckon it paid for itself in the first month!

Cheers,

Hi Jake i have machine like this, the Powermatic 720HD Heavy Duty Mortiser. But i have the LEDA brand Carbetec at one time used to sell it also. The reason i bought this machine is because it can take a full size door on edge or for that matter you can mortise the ends of timber up to one meter long.
Have you thought about some of the old horizontal slot mortiser machines. They go pretty cheap second hand and really have more working capacity than the vertical machines.

Jake,
a horizontal slot morticer is the way to go. I just cut 144 (plus a few trial runs) 1/2" wide by 50mm deep x 50mm long mortices with mine in less than a day. I've got a Delta chisel morticer with a rack and pinion arrangement drive, 1/2 hp and heavy duty dovetail ways and it would've taken me at least three times as long with it.

Mick

Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

...... I've got a Delta chisel morticer with a rack and pinion arrangement drive, 1/2 hp and heavy duty dovetail ways and it would've taken me at least three times as long with it.
Mick

Mick - did you subtract the time taken squaring the mortices or rounding the tenons??

Yeah, for high volume production, you couldn't hope to compete with the slot morticer using a plunger. It's all a matter of weighing your needs & means, of course. More $$$s initial outlay, but much higher output in the right conditions. I would have liked a slot machine at the time, but finances were very tight & the hollow chisel morticer was fine for the sort of low-volume, highly varied work I was doing then.

Cheers,

Ian,
I'm using loose tenons. It took me all of about 2 hrs from start to finish (including machine set up and moving the thicknesser) to rip, dress and round over 12m of tenon stock. I bought my slot morticer off Major Panicwho had bought it off another forum member. I think I paid around $300 for it. Paid for itself about an hour into the first job. Which is just as well, because I've had the thing sitting around doing nothing for over a year.

Mick

Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

..... I think I paid around $300 for it. Paid for itself about an hour into the first job........

300 $$$s I guess you would pay for that pretty quickly.

It can sit another while now & you don't have to feel guilty when you look at it!

I never feel guilty about buying tools or machinery. If it's a bargain that I know I will use down the trrack I'll buy it. I have a huge double drum sander sitting in a shipping container which has done nothing other than depreciate since I bought it for $1000. When I finally get the shed extended and have somewhere to use it then it will pay for itself pretty quickly.

Mick