Thread: Chisel morticer any good on Aussie woods????

We have a Powermatic at the Bundy WW Guild, it generally only gets used on the softer hardwoods like silky oak. For the woods you are talking about I believe it would cope with up to maybe 3/8” mortises but I don’t think I’d risk anything bigger. If you do get one you will also need to invest in sharpening equipment for the chisels and augers.

Originally Posted by TTIT

Our local club is putting in for another grant for new machinery and a morticer was a suggested option. Having no experience with them at all, I was wondering if they even work on the woods we use most. How do they go on things around the density of Blackwood, Bluegum, Spotted gum and the like???

This is my chisel mortiser, Masterwood OMB1V. and this is the chisel I use, it cuts 25mm x 120mm x 100mm in one stroke, this chisel is the largest you can go.

like all machinery, keep your tooling sharp.

You should be able to use them on Australian hardwood, you just take it slowly, but need to sharpen your tooling often I suppose.

when I cut my 25mm x 120mm mortise, penetrating 100mm deep, the whole mortise is done in 15 seconds, I can do it slower. but there is no need to.

a 25mm chisel cost about $1000 NZD a few years ago.


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You should have no problems at all. Provided you aren't too ambitious.

My dear old dad bought me a lovely little Multico bench morticer home from the UK around about 1980. It was (I think) the first serious "hobby" Morticer on the market, & wasn't cheap: GBP 230 or so I think. Multico were once the World's premier Morticer manufacturer, & eventually made quite an extensive range of bench morticers for the home/DIY/commercial market alongside their industrial models. Some were quite sophisticated, offering X, Y & Z axis adjustments and tilting angled operation for stair spindle mortises & the like. Mine by contrast was the smallest & simplest of their range.

The advent of at first inexpensive Taiwanese machines, later imitated even more cheaply in China, spelt the company's demise.

Mine is still going strong. Remarkably so, given that it's a small, lightweight but extremely well designed tool with very modest motor power (a mere 375 Watts). Max capacity is 1/2": easily achievable in any hardwood you care to load onto the table. Larger apertures are achieved with multiple overlapping plunges.

What makes any Morticer great is an extremely powerful & parallel plunge leverage and gearing. My littl'un uses an extremely well made cast iron rack & pinion mechanism with a long plunge lever. All other working parts are assembled from commercially available steel sections that are bolted or welded together.

I've tried a 3/4" chisel in my machine, but it really doesn't like it. It's just beyond the design brief, being over twice (225% actually) the cross sectional area of a 1/2" chisel. Forcing such a large chisel in a single stroke down into hardwood is just too much. This is more the province of a big industrial machine like a Wadkin, Multico M, Sedgwick or Cooksley professional machine. With at least 1 HP or better 2 for the auger drive, & as much weight as possible. Somewhere around 200-500 KG would be preferable.

These 1" machines are in reality rated as such for softwood morticing, & really are good for a max capacity of 3/4" in Oz hardwoods, English Oak & the like.

Weight means stability, & stability means less flex and bending when you're forcing that chisel downwards with a pressure of well over several tons. My tiny little Multico generates a pressure of well over a Ton by itself. Imagine the pressure necessary for driving a chisel of 4 x CSA!

You'll also need high quality chisels & matching augers. The best were traditionally from William Ridgway, part of the Record Marples group or Clico, the makers of Clifton woodworking tools. Not even sure if these Sheffield made tooling are still available. Some Japanese manufacturers also were held in high regard, but of a slightly different chisel & auger design.

Given that the best quality industrial machines are relatively understressed, have fully adjustable racks & slides & are usually only used intermittently at best, I'd personally recommend getting any old industrial machine before even considering some lightweight East Asian sourced new alternative.

With such low quality, cheap 'n nasty timber jointing methods as dowels, dominoes & the like becoming all but ubiquitous in low quality furniture joinery, you can now pick up excellent quality industrial Morticers at relative bargain prices. A good solid ton or so of Sheffield cast iron will always trump 50 Kg odd of East Asian alternative.

Tip: Remember to always use a coin to set the auger/chisel gap.

Not sure if this answers your specific Q, but if not, then ask me some specifics. I might be able to help: if not, I'll just tell you to bugger off.

I have been using my Chisel Mortiser for thirty years it cuts any thing I put under it including 20 mm mortises in Jarrah, sharp chisel and correct technique help

How about a slot mortiser instead? With carbide tooling they can handle just about anything.

I got the chisel nortising attachment for a drill press form Timbecon a couple of years ago, cost about $70, I think.

I have used it in old, hard, recycled Red Gum and Jarrah for shallow mortises (more like grooves as they were about 350mm long). I used the 1/2 inch chisel and it worked alright with due care and attention.

Would I recommend it for a club or mens shed? Well, not if I was in charge of repairs and maintenence.

Won't it all come down to the money available? I've got one of these Carbatec Cabinet Mount Chisel Mortiser | Carbatec. With the square chisel cutter it is difficult particularly when doing the first cut and then trying to retrieve the cutter back out from the timber (both hard and soft). I haven't done it as yet but I have often considered just using a high speed drill bit which means the mortise would not have square corners.

Back in the sixties when I started my apprenticeship the joinery shop I worked in had a chain mortiser and was used on an array of different timbers.

Awesome machine Albert you blink and the mortise is done!....mind you at a cost.
Steven

Just looked at the used Morticers sold on flea-bay for the last couple of months. As I thought, the big professional models seem to sell for similar prices to the asian "cheapies". From around a 20 Quid low to about a 500 Quid high. Or roughly from about $40-$1000. There seems to be a bit of a sweet spot around 200 Quid (AU $400), where most of the really good commercial & professional brands seem to cluster.

Another distinct advantage of buying used (apart from the quality of course) is that you're likely to also be provided with a fair swag of tooling too, & perhaps even some hollow chisel sharpening cones/reamers, which could very easily run a purchaser into the hundreds, if not a thousand or more for a full set of sizes if purchased new.

3 Phase machines seem the cheapest, despite being clearly superior due to the overlapping sine wave pulses.

Unfortunately, there's no ready market in Oz for used pro machines, but still a private import of a palleted used Sedgwick of Multico M series will still come out cheaper than a dodgy new one from a dubious source. About $800-1000 inclusive of palleting & shipping is going to buy somebody one helluva machine, with perhaps all the extra trimmings too.

I have a cobber who had inherited a drill-stand type mortice attachment: it was awful. He "upgraded" to a kit to fit his drill press. It was worse! Neither allowed anywhere near sufficient leverage/rack gearing to force the chisel down, even with puny 1/4" hollow chisels! His third attempt, a supposedly "commercial" machine from a well known national woodworking tool supplier was just about adequate, but no more. It ended up costing him near $1K by the time it was tooled up.