John15
Established Member
Jacob":4imp8utb said:
I'm one of those ''chaps in sheds'' with plenty of time so no need to use heavy tools for speed like Jacob.
John
Regular Mortice Chisel or Bevel Edged for your Mortices
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I'm one of those ''chaps in sheds'' with plenty of time so no need to use heavy tools for speed like Jacob.
John
John15
Established Member
I'm one of those ''chaps in sheds'' with plenty of time so no need to use heavy tools for speed like Jacob.
John[/quote]
I thought he had retired...
Pete[/quote]
Sorry, I should have said ''...as Jacob advocates''
John
John[/quote]
I thought he had retired...
Pete[/quote]
Sorry, I should have said ''...as Jacob advocates''
John
thetyreman
Established Member
you could just use a big mallet and bevel edge chisel though and it does exactly the same thing as the mortise chisel, this has been proven by paul sellers in one of his videos, he really goes out of his way to show you that the mortise chisels are no better or faster.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
John15":392bg16d said:
I thought he had retired...
Pete[/quote]
Sorry, I should have said ''...as Jacob advocates''
John[/quote] :lol:
I've got a very nice mortice machine - no fiddling with hand tools unless absolutely essential!
I did do a lot by hand at first though, including mortices.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
He's right about most things but he's wrong about that.thetyreman":3sgkh8ov said:
woodbrains
Established Member
thetyreman":1vqlgpcb said:
Hello,
Careful, Santa will be cross with you. :ho2
Mike.
I'm sure that the guys cutting a lot of mortises by trade could've counted the strokes and done a typical mortise in a specific number of strokes.
George Wilson said something to me about a guy hammer setting saws in an alley in sheffield (or whatever you'd call it there when someone is just outside their building). Either he or someone else gave the guy a dovetail saw and he set it like a sewing machine. bap bap bap bap bap...I can't remember the quote, but it was something like a minute of time to set it.
I doubt Paul Sellers' gimmick test (well, it's not really his test) is representative of what trade workers would've done, but most of us will never cut enough mortises to know the real score.
One thing I've noted cutting plane mortises (which has become an exercise only in brute force, not in elegance), once the first pass is done, removing stock when there is an open side is not the same - it's about half or a third of the effort. Glass removes the holding power of the wood on the other side. Whether or not that would make a difference, I don't know, but the beginners swooning over how easy it is for Paul to make smooth cuts with a fair amount of waste - it'd be that easy for everyone. It'd be a lot less easy looking if the one side of the stock wasn't open to a piece of glass.
George Wilson said something to me about a guy hammer setting saws in an alley in sheffield (or whatever you'd call it there when someone is just outside their building). Either he or someone else gave the guy a dovetail saw and he set it like a sewing machine. bap bap bap bap bap...I can't remember the quote, but it was something like a minute of time to set it.
I doubt Paul Sellers' gimmick test (well, it's not really his test) is representative of what trade workers would've done, but most of us will never cut enough mortises to know the real score.
One thing I've noted cutting plane mortises (which has become an exercise only in brute force, not in elegance), once the first pass is done, removing stock when there is an open side is not the same - it's about half or a third of the effort. Glass removes the holding power of the wood on the other side. Whether or not that would make a difference, I don't know, but the beginners swooning over how easy it is for Paul to make smooth cuts with a fair amount of waste - it'd be that easy for everyone. It'd be a lot less easy looking if the one side of the stock wasn't open to a piece of glass.
Cheshirechappie
Established Member
AndyT":afm2446u said:To be fair to Paul, he does make the distinction between large scale work on hard woods (gates, big doors) and delicate work on mild timber (furniture making).
The 1970s Marples chisels he mentions, like their contemporary Stanley equivalent, are a lot thicker and made of more robust steel than pre-war bevel edge chisels which taper down to nearly zero along their sides, so it's no surprise to see it demonstrated that they are robust enough for the job.
So it's good information for someone starting out or just wanting the bare minimum of tools.
But for me, now that I have pretty well covered the range of light, medium and heavy chisels for all ordinary sizes bar timber framing and shipbuilding, I will continue to use a mortice chisel whenever I can.
If the mortice is too short to accommodate a deep mortice chisel, I would use a sash mortice chisel, a registered chisel, or possibly a firmer.
On a side note, I'm sure I remember at school that we were set the task of cutting narrow mortices in softwood without using a mallet. I think the chisel would have been an ordinary Sheffield made firmer chisel with a wooden handle, kept properly sharp by our teacher. I think it was a genuine exercise in understanding how the chisel penetrates and cuts the fibres into free space and wasn't just an excuse to keep the noise down!
I do very much agree with the point about the STYLE of bevel-edged chisel. The modern sort with the much stronger neck, bolster and tang, and deep lands, should hold up to a bit of malleting and levering quite easily, the old (say pre-1960) type with thin blade, very narrow lands, and smaller neck, bolster and tang are really better kept for what they were made for - paring and light tapping with a small mallet.
The size of mortice has something to do with it, too. For someone equipping themselves for furniture work in solid woods, most mortices will be in the 1/4" or 5/16" range, with maybe the occasional 3/16" or smaller. They may only ever need to make a 1/2" or larger mortice when building their bench, so buying an OBM chisel specially for that one job doesn't really make sense; the larger b/e chisels are by their very nature stronger, anyway. However, if really small mortices are required (does happen in cabinet work), using an 1/8" b/e chisel to sink them may not be the best plan - 1/8" b/e chisels are not made for heavy malleting. Good luck finding a 3/16" b/e or registered firmer chisel, too! So for small mortices, an OBM would be the pragmatic choice.
I know some people buy 'sets' of mortice chisels, so they'll have the choice of chisel type, but I'll lay good money they only use one or two sizes regularly, and some not at all!
Sets of chisels are like having a complete stanley 55. You'll never use most of it, but it's attractive for resale and makes resale easier.
I had a set of RI chisels early on (the D2 chisels). I only used two of them regularly (1/4 and 5/16), and they were nice. It was easy to sell a set of them when I sold them (and thanks to buying them used, I lost nothing when I sold them) - because a set draws beginners who also want a set.
When I built my bench, my bench legs are 5 1/2" square. I wasted the mortises with a spade bit and then cleaned the sides, and the tenons (except for small mortises and tenons between the legs at the floor) were all just cut out with a carpenter saw and the shoulder cleaned with a chisel.
Never did get a chance to use a mortise chisel for anything other than cutting plane mortises, and even at that, any chisel is fine, as long as it can tolerate heavy strikes.
But cutting the oft-made 1/4th mortise with an old oval bolster chisel is pleasant and easy.
To lend to your comment about thin mortises, even at a quarter inch, you can get in trouble if the mortise sides have some grip. I had two sets of chisels at one point - the RI chisels and some japanese blue steel smaller cabinet mortise chisels. The 6mm chisel in that japanese set (it was not a cheap set) broke at the lamination line and snapped off without more than just typical work - no abuse. I never really looked at it, but the sides probably didn't have enough taper. It was always a lot of work to move it around in a mortise and it eventually gave up. With an oval bolster chisel, you run it down on the bevel side, rotate it and pull the stuff out. No real chance of anything breaking.
I had a set of RI chisels early on (the D2 chisels). I only used two of them regularly (1/4 and 5/16), and they were nice. It was easy to sell a set of them when I sold them (and thanks to buying them used, I lost nothing when I sold them) - because a set draws beginners who also want a set.
When I built my bench, my bench legs are 5 1/2" square. I wasted the mortises with a spade bit and then cleaned the sides, and the tenons (except for small mortises and tenons between the legs at the floor) were all just cut out with a carpenter saw and the shoulder cleaned with a chisel.
Never did get a chance to use a mortise chisel for anything other than cutting plane mortises, and even at that, any chisel is fine, as long as it can tolerate heavy strikes.
But cutting the oft-made 1/4th mortise with an old oval bolster chisel is pleasant and easy.
To lend to your comment about thin mortises, even at a quarter inch, you can get in trouble if the mortise sides have some grip. I had two sets of chisels at one point - the RI chisels and some japanese blue steel smaller cabinet mortise chisels. The 6mm chisel in that japanese set (it was not a cheap set) broke at the lamination line and snapped off without more than just typical work - no abuse. I never really looked at it, but the sides probably didn't have enough taper. It was always a lot of work to move it around in a mortise and it eventually gave up. With an oval bolster chisel, you run it down on the bevel side, rotate it and pull the stuff out. No real chance of anything breaking.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Mortice chisels were made down to 1/8" width but with the same rounded bevel, deep blade, tapered sides, as the bigger ones. Cutting a 1/8" mortice (a.k.a. a "slot") with one of these is very easy. With a normal 1/8" firmer or bevel edge it'd be impossible. Sellers wrong again!Cheshirechappie":3n3ey5li said:
Tasky
Established Member
How deep, though? Ifit's not that deep, I imagine he'll sooner crack out the (easily found for a fiver on eBay) hand plane or plough plane...!Jacob":n7g0abec said:
Sellers does have a fair few blogs and videos on the differences, stating that he was trained to use motice chisels but that none of those he apprenticed around ever did. I'm sure there's more context, but I CBA to sift through it all right now!
NickN
Established Member
Just to set the record straight, here's a bit of what Paul Sellers wrote on the subject:
"I recently saw a Youtube video put together by Lie Nielsen where it shows a mortise being cut behind glass; the idea was to show the progression of the traditional method using a traditional ‘pig-sticker’ mortise chisel.
As a boy in school I was shown this method and indeed we were trained that way, but once I left school and started to chop mortises in the everyday of life I found that lightweight chisels chopped more effectively, especially on the lighter work of furniture making and joinery rather than the heavy bank doors once common that had 3/4″ wide 5″ x 5″ deep twin and double mortises in mahogany and oak (that’s two or four mortises per corner sometimes on the bottom and middle rails). In my apprenticeship, most of the men chopped mortises with a Marples bevel-edged chisel. They used the ones shortened by wear, admittedly, but I used my then brand new Marples bluechips and have done so now for almost five decades. In all of those years using these and other makers, I have never bent a chisel once. Furthermore, I have trained 3,500 woodworkers, many raw beginners to the bench, and I have never found one chisel bent either.
Growing in my craft, I found myself changing the pattern and developed the one I teach and advocate today. No matter the chisel, this method is fast and highly efficient and so effective I find myself able to consistently chop a 4″ long mortise 1 1/2″ deep and 3/8 wide in around 4 minutes. I own a mortise machine, but seldom use it because of this. Anything and everything you have seen me work on in the past three years has been cut by hand methods.
My reason for staying with the bevel-edged chisels is indeed as much the size of the bevel cutting edge itself as the thinness of the steel chisel used. Obviously, because it’s so small (narrow), the steel penetrates very effectively in any wood. The lighter weight of the chisel means I can easily drive it with minimum counter-opposition from the weight I inevitably get with the heavy framing chisels.
Working on massive doors in the pre-machine age and making such projects day in day out I would indeed use a heavy weight traditional mortise chisel. I worked on two large doors for the National Trust’s Penrhyn Castle two years ago and so I do not challenge the ancient craftsmen who used and developed them for such work. Neither do I challenge them for fine work either. An English five-bar field gate had ten mortises 3/4″ by 4-5″ through stile 4-6″ wide and a man made one in a ten-hour day complete with bracing in solid oak. That man used the kind of mortise chisel I am talking about. These chisels were wonderfully made to last the lifetimes of two craftsmen."
"I recently saw a Youtube video put together by Lie Nielsen where it shows a mortise being cut behind glass; the idea was to show the progression of the traditional method using a traditional ‘pig-sticker’ mortise chisel.
As a boy in school I was shown this method and indeed we were trained that way, but once I left school and started to chop mortises in the everyday of life I found that lightweight chisels chopped more effectively, especially on the lighter work of furniture making and joinery rather than the heavy bank doors once common that had 3/4″ wide 5″ x 5″ deep twin and double mortises in mahogany and oak (that’s two or four mortises per corner sometimes on the bottom and middle rails). In my apprenticeship, most of the men chopped mortises with a Marples bevel-edged chisel. They used the ones shortened by wear, admittedly, but I used my then brand new Marples bluechips and have done so now for almost five decades. In all of those years using these and other makers, I have never bent a chisel once. Furthermore, I have trained 3,500 woodworkers, many raw beginners to the bench, and I have never found one chisel bent either.
Growing in my craft, I found myself changing the pattern and developed the one I teach and advocate today. No matter the chisel, this method is fast and highly efficient and so effective I find myself able to consistently chop a 4″ long mortise 1 1/2″ deep and 3/8 wide in around 4 minutes. I own a mortise machine, but seldom use it because of this. Anything and everything you have seen me work on in the past three years has been cut by hand methods.
My reason for staying with the bevel-edged chisels is indeed as much the size of the bevel cutting edge itself as the thinness of the steel chisel used. Obviously, because it’s so small (narrow), the steel penetrates very effectively in any wood. The lighter weight of the chisel means I can easily drive it with minimum counter-opposition from the weight I inevitably get with the heavy framing chisels.
Working on massive doors in the pre-machine age and making such projects day in day out I would indeed use a heavy weight traditional mortise chisel. I worked on two large doors for the National Trust’s Penrhyn Castle two years ago and so I do not challenge the ancient craftsmen who used and developed them for such work. Neither do I challenge them for fine work either. An English five-bar field gate had ten mortises 3/4″ by 4-5″ through stile 4-6″ wide and a man made one in a ten-hour day complete with bracing in solid oak. That man used the kind of mortise chisel I am talking about. These chisels were wonderfully made to last the lifetimes of two craftsmen."
MarkDennehy
Established Member
I wonder if anyone's compared the straight-or-hollow-ground bevel on the modern chisels to the rather convex grind on the older pigstickers?
There's this theory that says that complex bevel acts as a lever during the impact of the mallet, effectively both chopping and extracting waste in one go, reducing effort for the guy with the mallet.
If that's the case, pigstickers will always have room for a larger convex surface compared to a firmer or bevel-edged chisel so they'd have a theoretical advantage.
Now, how much of a real-world advantage that'd be if you're morticing in inch-thick pine and pondering buying a domino, I'm not certain
There's this theory that says that complex bevel acts as a lever during the impact of the mallet, effectively both chopping and extracting waste in one go, reducing effort for the guy with the mallet.
If that's the case, pigstickers will always have room for a larger convex surface compared to a firmer or bevel-edged chisel so they'd have a theoretical advantage.
Now, how much of a real-world advantage that'd be if you're morticing in inch-thick pine and pondering buying a domino, I'm not certain
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
The rounded bevel firstly is easier to sharpen (on this and all edge tools) secondly is good for levering out the corners of blind mortices. Rounded like many levering tools - claw hammer, pinch bar, nail pullers etc - results in a moving fulcrum from close up to the edge for max leverage but shifting as it goes.
Nothing complex or malletty about it!
PS except for corners of blind mortices as above you don't actually do any levering with a mortice chisel, it's always vertical, the waste mostly gets blasted out and anything left is usually tapped out or lifted with a smaller chisel.
What makes it fast is that you can whack it in hard but thanks to bevel and tapered section it easily loosens, where a thinner chisel would jam tight like a nail. You cut down the face of the previous cut ( bit like digging a trench) so each cut goes deeper than the one before. Then turn it around and work it the other way. No levering required.
Nothing complex or malletty about it!
PS except for corners of blind mortices as above you don't actually do any levering with a mortice chisel, it's always vertical, the waste mostly gets blasted out and anything left is usually tapped out or lifted with a smaller chisel.
What makes it fast is that you can whack it in hard but thanks to bevel and tapered section it easily loosens, where a thinner chisel would jam tight like a nail. You cut down the face of the previous cut ( bit like digging a trench) so each cut goes deeper than the one before. Then turn it around and work it the other way. No levering required.
MarkDennehy":ulvfu7yd said:I wonder if anyone's compared the straight-or-hollow-ground bevel on the modern chisels to the rather convex grind on the older pigstickers?
There's this theory that says that complex bevel acts as a lever during the impact of the mallet, effectively both chopping and extracting waste in one go, reducing effort for the guy with the mallet.
If that's the case, pigstickers will always have room for a larger convex surface compared to a firmer or bevel-edged chisel so they'd have a theoretical advantage.
Now, how much of a real-world advantage that'd be if you're morticing in inch-thick pine and pondering buying a domino, I'm not certain
If you chop the mortise with the bevel facing away from the waste side, you have the chisel wedged in the cut (though not tightly so due to its design) and a quick push forward breaks off the chip at the bottom of the cut. It's quite nice. the bevel is rounded at the top of the chisel body and then (Depending on the user), it might be at the cutting edge, too, mostly flat between the two points (a large rounded bevel over the whole length would be undesirable).
I've seen more than one picture of older chisels where nothing was rounded and the mortise chisel was tapered along its width and thickness. A chisel like that cuts less neatly on the side, but is less effort (I have tried one of that type cutting plane mortises) because the chisel behind the edge is less wide than most of the cut area. I have no idea about mortise style vs. chisel (e.g, if that type of chisel was more popular in green wood where the mortise wasn't pristine and the joint pegged).
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
Bevel at the back as you cut the face of the waste with the face of the chisel against it - like digging a trench you take away a vertical face as you progress away, then turn and come back going deeper. Always vertical, always a cut deeper down the face left from the previous cut, until you turn. I was shown how to do this - it might have taken a lot of time to work it out!D_W":1imoll7g said:
It's like cutting steps down, then turning and cutting them again.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
I just watched Paul Sellers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_NXq7_TILA
He would have lost marks and been told off by Mr Ford (Kirkby-in-Ashfield Skill Centre 1982) for doing it sloppily and wrong! (I know I did!)
Mr Ford's way was;
start anywhere except on the line
chisel vertical at all times - no levering
each cut is vertical down the face of the previous cut (opposite to Sellers) and progressively deeper (same as Sellers)
proceed until just short of the line and then reverse and work your way back - chopping through the chippings, no need to lever them out
clean off to the line as the last cut.
I wonder if he would see it differently if he had learned how to do it properly in the first place?
He would have lost marks and been told off by Mr Ford (Kirkby-in-Ashfield Skill Centre 1982) for doing it sloppily and wrong! (I know I did!)
Mr Ford's way was;
start anywhere except on the line
chisel vertical at all times - no levering
each cut is vertical down the face of the previous cut (opposite to Sellers) and progressively deeper (same as Sellers)
proceed until just short of the line and then reverse and work your way back - chopping through the chippings, no need to lever them out
clean off to the line as the last cut.
I wonder if he would see it differently if he had learned how to do it properly in the first place?
NickN
Established Member
I guess Mr Ford wouldn't have liked this 'sloppy and wrong' Japanese chap either... :lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlQi5tjeGo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlQi5tjeGo
