Improving mortise chopping efficiency
My arms are hanging limply against my sides, and lifting up my fingers to type this post is an undertaking in itself. Simply put, I am shattered from chopping large mortises this afternoon, and I have another bunch to do tomorrow.
I have a little mortising experience, but nothing on this scale. I was chopping 25 mm mortises through 90 mm Tasmanian Oak legs.
I found that when making my digging cuts (bevel facing the direction of travel), each successive “step” was only a mm or so lower than the previous one. I’m sure with previous projects each step was greater.
I tried taking a larger bite, then smaller but it made no perceivable difference. Is it simply a factor of the 25 mm edge won’t penetrate as far as a 6 or 12 mm chisel?
Would proper mortising chisels work better (I could probably hit them harder than my bevel edge chisels).
As it was, I would chop the length of the mortise (90 mm), and then turn around. By the time I got back to the start, having travelled 180 mm, I was at half depth (45 mm) or at least close to it, so had to turn around again to get the rest of the mortise to that depth. Then flip the leg over and start again from the other side.
Tomorrow’s mortises will be 180 mm long, so may do 12 or 16 mm mortises for those ones.
On the bright side, I was not at all cold in the shed today from the exertion, and the results did look pretty good.
And thoughts would be appreciated.
Lance
Improving mortise chopping efficiency
Thanks HandyJack and Mark,
Now I feel like an idiot. I’ve been doing a bunch of reading and it appears that you’re both correct, nobody chops 25 mm mortises with just a chisel like I’ve been doing, and as Mark suggested, you can’t even buy morticing chisels that large!
I’ve got one more that has to match the others, so must be 25 mm. I’ll try removing some waste with the drill first... if I can lift my arms tomorrow.
Thanks again
Lance