I decided that I should mix some Mortise and Tenon practice amidst my dovetail practice. The real reason, is that I have done machine cut mortise and tenon but not very well. Since this was a different technique given that I’m cutting them by hand, I was hopeful that I could do much better.
I used my new sharpened mortise chisels along with my new hand brace. I’ve read that some people do the mortise entirely by chisels and I’ve also read that some folks use brace and auger bits to get the bulk of material out. My first attempt at using the brace was a fail. I had a center line to center the bit on but my first attempt was off. It’s not really possible to put it back on center once a hole is started. My second attempt with the brace was better but still off. I used an awl to mark the center line and was only barely outside of the center. I suspect this second time was not keeping the brace level and plumb.
So after these two fails, I used just the chisel. WOW, that was the way to go. I was able to keep with in the lines and it didn’t take much effort to cut the mortise out. Of course, I’m getting really good at sharpening so I can attest that the chisel was very sharp. I followed the technique to ease up on the shoulder marks. Using this, the walls of the mortise were nice and square. I was very pleased. I did learn that a goose neck chisel would be very useful. I had a tough time cleaning out the bottom. I know the bottom doesn’t have to be as nice as the walls but I still wanted the mortise to it’s finished depth.
On to the tenon. I used the mortise to mark the tenon. I did my rip and crosscut cuts. I found though that I didn’t make one of my rip cuts deep enough and it caused me to go way to deep on a crosscut cut. Even with this, I tried the mortise and found it was fat (whew!) so I was able to pear it down to fit nice and snug. Though with the too deep of cut, the tenon broke off on the final fitting.
I will try and do this again and see if I can take some pictures for the next posting.
