Thread: Morticing Machines

It all depends on the type of work you do, if you constuct items often using mortises then they are great time saver, if you hardly ever use such joints then the machine will just take up valuable shed space.
A chain mortise machine is most usefull for machine through type mortises and will cut faster than a hollow chisel type (providing your chain is sharp

I assume the chisel morticer can do a smaller mortice also.

I haven't had any experience with smaller chisel morticers, I rent a wadkin mf which is a chisel and chain combination. It does one thing well and the only other thing I have used it for I as a drill press when I needed a longer stroke than the 80 mm on my drill press. I would use it around 20 times a year (1 person joinery shop). It is pretty old but still works pretty well I don't use the chain much at all. If I had a choice of chisel mortises it would be the wadkin dmv which I have never seen in Australia only on pommy web sites. It has a vibrating head to assist with cutting. A fully reconditioned chain chisel unit (dominion) is advertised for $6500.00. Others like the one I hire might be worth $1500-$2000.
Ben

ps as an aside I have never had any success sharpening the smaller augers. Both professionally sharpened and sharpened myself. I can get it sharp however they always seem to snap a very short time after sharpening

They are Really worth while Dale , if you want to do traditional joinery . Quality stuff.
I have six of them, four running, yeah I have a problem!! the smallest one is The largest Carbatec size [ old style ] and the largest Machine is The Wadkin MF . I don't have to change tooling when choosing a size.
If you want to build stuff and Dowel or Biscuit or Domino you can get away with it, building average quality supposedly faster sometimes, joinery.
You will have a smaller outlay on the machinery, and those machines take up a lot less space.

If you want to build anything that was made in the past, they were built with the tools that came out of an old style tool box. Stick to mortise and tenon . And have the traditional tools to use and back you up when the power goes off . The other gizmos are good to have as well, biscuits dowels etc .

I used the one chisel machine for years and did a huge amount of work with it from tiny 1/4 inch wide in small doors to big 2"wide x 8" long large table mortises with it.

The good thing about the chisel mortiser is it produces the same hole a mortise chisel produces .Square ended and flat bottomed. A twenty minute job with a chisel takes one minute by machine . If you do it in your shed for a hobby The largest Carbatec machine would be a great thing to have , Carbatec don't sell that model any more though. I have seen them sell for around $500 on ebay I think .

A chain is good for larger runs of large mortises I have only just started using a chain and I am surprised how well they cut , when I asked around years ago about chain mortising a got the answer back a few times that they were a bit more agricultural like , rougher in the way they work , They chip out on one side if care is not taken , and they leave a radius in the corner at the bottom ,so I reckon the best one to have is the combined chain and chisel, side by side, so the chisel takes care of those round bottoms. Those machines are BIG . I wouldn't recommend having just a chain mortiser without a chisel , either have a separate chisel as well or a combined one .

You can pretty easily get hollow chisels between 1/4 inch and 5/8 and their not to badly priced.
On the other hand new Chain bar and sprocket sets for a chain set up , can unfortunately cost between $600 and $800 a set. You can play with old sets and mix and marry them together, and get away with spending a lot less . sizes for chains cover from 1/4 inch up to much bigger sizes from what Ive seen .

If you can mortise fast the next problem I had was how to tenon fast. A good way for a small workshop is to use a radial arm saw, I think . I used one for years until I went and built a tenoner, two routers on a trolley , then I bought one someone else had built , and I just traded that in and went bigger, Wadkin ECA .
Oh the joy, I love the thing.
One comercial guy I know had a dedicated radial arm saw with a dado blade set up for tenons , another commercial guy does all his on a band saw incredibly ??

Rob

So from the sounds of it if you can only have one or the other the chisel morticer is the one to have. Exempting a combined unit due to size, expense & availability.

Here are some I have seen recently.
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The green one although floor standing is a only ⅔ rds the sice of the ACE, and I think is too low to work at and would need to sit on a small block. It is asking $480, the Wolfenden Chain morticer is an impressive machine and the guy with it did his apprenticeship on the machine, asking $880. Based on the price of other things I thought these were a bit high.

I missed mentioning the three main types , there is the chisel only machine , the chisel or chain machine , and the chisel and chain machine.

Chisel or chain has a head that fits over the chain drive part and runs a chisel , so you have to swap parts around to do one or the other, they are a same size machine as a chisel only depending on age and style.

Chisel and chain is permanently set up side by side in line . The ones I have are the Wadkin and a Wolfenden .

I have a two Wolfenden's the same as the grey one in your picture on the right . they are chisel or chain , we saw that grey one as well down Geelong , its missing its chisel head fitting , we couldnt find it .

I think that little green one is a C and H isnt it ?, Matty pointed it out to me .at the same place I think as the other one.

That Ace could be a chisel or chain as well that may have lost it's chisel head ? not sure.
Edit . yeah that's a chisel or chain and its fitted with its chisel head so nothing lost by the looks , except the drop chip breaker thing on the right that fits in the double bracket, not that hard to make and replace that . Take off that chisel head and a sprocket and bar to fit a chain on should fit.
How much is that machine ?

The old non motored one , I know of another guy who only uses one of those. in a commercial business as well . he has made a lot of tables with one but is mainly a post and rung chair maker . They work .slower though.

The first two are just ones I have also seen this week neither are for sale. I have seen Matty's but so long ago I can't remember it.

If I was to get one a chisel or chain complete with both heads would be best.

Frank , I think is his name , Nice fella , Machinery dealer at Northern Machinery, sold a Wolfenden, same as your pic on the right , with chisel head , chisels and chains , Painted and ready to go for around $1900 . a year or two back.

I have two mortise machines. Neither set up yet. One is a chain and chisel job giving the option of either .

The other is a dedicated chisel mortiser. Yes i believe you can change sizes of chisel and chain

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

Originally Posted by auscab

If you do it in your shed for a hobby The largest Carbatec machine would be a great thing to have , Carbatec don't sell that model any more though. I have seen them sell for around $500 on ebay I think .

I've got the big carbatec model, but I don't use it very much. I don't get much time in the shed and for me a domino would be much quicker and more accurate than a chisel mortiser. Don't get me wrong, it cuts great mortises and it is fast. But I ended up spending a fair bit of time tuning the machine to make sure everything is square. Then I had to tune the tenons to the joint.

I think the trick is to put the effort into setting up the machine perfectly and then spending the time laying out your joint. I always skimp on this last step, then find that I spend twice as much as time tuning the tenons.

Trav

My Mortiser cuts true and square , It went out of whack once after I was a bit slack after a clean and oil and didn't put it back together right but I fixed that. Being able to produce a true tenon is a big help , if it needs a little fine tuning with a shoulder plane that's ok. when both are being cut true the whole piece pulls up square every time. And even with no glue in it the piece stands firm . Before my first tenoner, when I did them of the radial arm , a lot of the time they had to be planed on the cheeks with a rebate plane and the shoulders had to be trued up with the shoulder plane . You get good at it when your doing it every week.


One thing that's good to do is grind or linish material off the chisel , leave the first 8mmto 10mm back from the cutting edge and grind the four sides a touch . This Makes the leading 8mmto 10mm of the chisel a tiny amount wider than the rest and you will not be getting the chisel jammed down the first square hole in it's first cut .

When I regrind the augers I some times re harden and temper with a Oxy torch . If they have been badly treated and are Black and blue from over heating while working them. Plenty of times I have walked in to see an apprentice on my Mortiser standing in a room full of smoke .If I'm using it I keep an air hose close by and a oil can , if it squeaks I oil it and don't let it jam up . It's been proven many times in history that apprentices don't give a S!!t .

Dale, the head for the chisels is in the middle picture and bolts on. I would ask the guy about the one you saw . we didn't ask him , there was some lady looking after the place when we were there. If he once worked with the machine it could be there.

Rob

Hi Dale,
I have an old mortiser I want to move on.
I'm replacing it with a line shaft machine.
This would have been made about 1900 and originally had a very Heath Robinson arrangement for the up and down movement off a line shaft drive.
I bought this in the early 80s and a mate gave me the 1hp 3phase motor which I adapted onto it.
As you can see its a very solid bit of kit and has no wear in the up and down travel.
The clamp and travel for the stuff is also very direct and easy to use.
I can include about 4 chisels/bits with it.
PM me if you are interested.
I made a lot of furniture with this old beast including a Jarrah cabinet for the foyer of the new Parliament House and the chair prototypes for the same place.It was also used for the Teak joinery on the steam yatch Ena restoration.
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I bought a bench-top version about 4 years ago but don't use it now.Whilst I did find it ok I was not overly impressed with the speed or accuracy of it.
I have moved over completely to loose tenons.
Using a decent router and spiral upcut bit I built a floor standing mortice cutter which enables me to cut a mortice in a piece of timber of almost unlimited size,in just a few seconds, try doing that with a hollow chisel morticer!

The main guts of the machine is a morticing atachment intended for a planer/thicknesser from Hare & forbes.This gives rapid adjustment of mortice depth, and length.It's not the best engineered thing I have ever seen but works perfectly and is very accurate.

It comes into it's own when using really hard timbers as the solid carbide spiral cutters go throught anything.The upcut one is the best and leaves a completely clean mortice with no cleaning out required.

I can post some pics if anyone would like to see it,I think I did post a picture on here some time back on another thread