More on Mortises - Someone who Does Them By Hand a Lot

[D_W]

Something struck me as off a little bit with the glass demonstrations, especially if you watch sellers chop a mortise that has wood on both sides. All of the sudden, it happens very slowly (which you can experience if you treat yourself to cutting a plane mortise - the mortising is really fast and easy once you cut the first row out and then get to mortise wood that's held only on one side).

I just remembered something last night, and two things strike me:
* I don't think registered and sash mortise chisels would've been made and sold as well as they did if there weren't professionals looking for them. They're too small for joiners, so who is left. Cabinetmakers, I guess.
* When Paul Sellers demonstrates something, there is still an air of someone who has never made something for a living without being subsidized (as in, he doesn't have the snap and swiftness of someone who has had to produce numbers).

Anyone remember this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQZsPs7 ... C17uH1fG1L

There used to be a whole bunch of his videos in one spot, but I can't find them, only a few accounts who look like they're ripping the videos off and reposting them. There were some others where he was making very elaborate furniture that was loaded with M&T joints.

Notice the chisel. It's similar to the japanese tataki type and in other videos he uses the smaller japanese mortise chisel type, it's not thin like a bench chisel - there's also no pigstickers. He said somewhere in the original videos that he finds these chisels for a dollar or two - used, and he mentions that he was a maker and had piece rate targets (it looks like he's semi retired, but his sign still advertises that he'll make furniture). In the video, he's working shungee rosewood or something similar, it's not softwood. Notice the snap and speed that he has that is missing from the western gurus who focus on attracting students.

Notice that he's using a mortise chisel, and it doesn't seem to slow him down in really hard wood.

 

[D_W]

I found some more. Cutting a very deep mortise in something hard:

http://www.xuemugong.com/forum.php?mod= ... &tid=24347

(hopefully you can see the video caption). I've noticed when true pros do work, there is a lot more economy in motion. While the gurus and the wannabes are arguing about whether cuts should be made with the bevel side or not, or referencing guru xyz's method, this guy is using the chisel without turning it. Cutting with the bevel side down when he makes the cuts toward him, and the back of the chisel when he's cutting wood away from him so that he doesn't have to stop and turn).

Whatever he's cutting in this video is extremely hard, none of the chips stay together. When I mortise rosewood or cocobolo for planes, I notice the chips never stay together in that, either. They fly out like broken projectiles.

 

[Jacob]

I found some more. Cutting a very deep mortise in something hard:

http://www.xuemugong.com/forum.php?mod= ... &tid=24347

(hopefully you can see the video caption). I've noticed when true pros do work, there is a lot more economy in motion. While the gurus and the wannabes are arguing about whether cuts should be made with the bevel side or not, or referencing guru xyz's method, this guy is using the chisel without turning it. Cutting with the bevel side down when he makes the cuts toward him, and the back of the chisel when he's cutting wood away from him so that he doesn't have to stop and turn).

Whatever he's cutting in this video is extremely hard, none of the chips stay together. When I mortise rosewood or cocobolo for planes, I notice the chips never stay together in that, either. They fly out like broken projectiles.

He talks a lot! He does a lot of levering which isn't really necessary, with a deep bladed western mortice chisel at least. Maybe that's it - the deep blade wedges them out of the way.

 

[D_W]

I found some more. Cutting a very deep mortise in something hard:

http://www.xuemugong.com/forum.php?mod= ... &tid=24347

(hopefully you can see the video caption). I've noticed when true pros do work, there is a lot more economy in motion. While the gurus and the wannabes are arguing about whether cuts should be made with the bevel side or not, or referencing guru xyz's method, this guy is using the chisel without turning it. Cutting with the bevel side down when he makes the cuts toward him, and the back of the chisel when he's cutting wood away from him so that he doesn't have to stop and turn).

Whatever he's cutting in this video is extremely hard, none of the chips stay together. When I mortise rosewood or cocobolo for planes, I notice the chips never stay together in that, either. They fly out like broken projectiles.

He talks a lot! He does a lot of levering which isn't really necessary, with a deep bladed western mortice chisel at least. Maybe that's it - the deep blade wedges them out of the way.

The japanese cabinetmaker's I've seen working at speed do a lot to flick the chips out of the mortise all the time, too. I guess they don't like to leave any waste in the mortise to get in the way. The wood used here in the video above, if it is what I think it is, is at least twice as hard as the kind of stuff we mortise on a regular basis, though, and doesn't break along grain lines like beech and oak do, so the levering may be due to that. His chisel looks a little sticky in the mortise like my japanese chisel was, but his chisel isn't breaking in half like mine did!!

 

[AndyT]

Interesting to see the use of a plain mortising stool, workholding by sitting on it, and plenty of wiggling.

Also, that he sits 'side saddle' - to show that there is always more than one answer, there's a picture of hand mortising in Rose's The Village Carpenter showing a tradesman sitting astride two pieces of wood which he is mortising.

The next page in the book has a useful metric worth remembering - that the making of a four panel door (ie ripping, hand planing, cutting the joints and assembly) was considered a single day's work.

 

[bugbear]

Notice the snap and speed that he has that is missing from the western gurus who focus on attracting students.

Indeed. There is a great difference between doing something as a demonstration and doing something so that others can learn from it.

Watching a 1930's Herring Girl for hours would fill you with admiration, but you'd learn very little about gutting fish.

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

Watching a 1930's Herring Girl for hours would fill you with admiration, but you'd learn very little about gutting fish.

BugBear

BB, you make me want to visit North Suffolk for my holidays - that sounds like my kind of fun!

 

[D_W]

Notice the snap and speed that he has that is missing from the western gurus who focus on attracting students.

Indeed. There is a great difference between doing something as a demonstration and doing something so that others can learn from it.

Watching a 1930's Herring Girl for hours would fill you with admiration, but you'd learn very little about gutting fish.

BugBear

I agree about some of the pros being hard to follow. There are definitely things to learn from the guy in this video, though. When mortising a plane mortise, we don't flip the plane around back and forth, but I do flip the bevel down for safety (to avoid overcutting the front of the mortise). Another maker made a comment to me at one point that he thought it was very efficient that I was working both sides of the mortise without flipping the plane (it never occurred to me to flip the plane, it's a lot of work to do that and it creates the potential for a chip to end up under the plane, which is a permanent dent guaranteed).

The person above takes it a step further - the ends of the mortise are vertical, at least toward the workman, so there is no risk of overcutting a diagonal like there is with a plane mortise, and I think I see a tip that I can stop turning the mortise chisel.

Charlie pointed out in another thread that if that's a real issue of efficiency, then (extrapolating what he said) we must have some serious demand on time in the context of a project. It's not so much that for me, it's that doing these things more efficiently is very physically satisfying. Walking a chisel to its spot vs. stopping and grabbing the tip, etc, is an immense difference in efficiency and it's also a huge benefit in terms of physical satisfaction performing the task. If we can do a mortise without stopping, that's nicer to do - feels nicer. It ends up being faster, too, which is a nice side benefit. I'm not there yet with furniture mortises, but hope to be now that I'm not going to cut the next 80 mortises with a chisel that sticks in the cut.

 

[undergroundhunter]

Something that will make a huge differance is the striking tool. Western joiners use wooden mallets which in my opinion/experience are relatively poor at transferring energy to the chisel. The guy DW linked to is using what can only be described as the back end of a hatchet which being metal will transfer the energy more efficiently to the cutting edge, therefore sinking the chisel edge deeper with each blow than a wooden mallet would. This is one of the reasons I don't use a wooden mallet I use a nylon faced hammer (but that's for a different thread).

There is a lot to be said for experience, in the second video the second guy although using the same general method was obviously less proficient and to be honest seeing how he uses the chisel I wouldn't like to lend him one of mine. I would imagine both Paul Sellers and Peter Follansbee have cut thousands of mortices by hand and both are pretty proficient/efficient at it, trying to demo a technique is very different to knocking out mortices for a project while off camera.

If you want inefficient try the method in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3jByNHeGxs, choping out a mortice with a small brass hammer seems silly to me, also when using the saw only uding about 3" of the tooth line.

Matt

 

[D_W]

Yes on the hatchet. The traditional thing to do in China (learned this from a china fanatic on another forum, but I'm sure it can be found reading on the internet pretty quickly) is to use the hatchet and use the poll directly when needing to use force. When needing something more subtle, they turn the hatchet and strike tools with the side of it instead.

 

[undergroundhunter]

Yes on the hatchet. The traditional thing to do in China (learned this from a china fanatic on another forum, but I'm sure it can be found reading on the internet pretty quickly) is to use the hatchet and use the poll directly when needing to use force. When needing something more subtle, they turn the hatchet and strike tools with the side of it instead.

Thats interesting, one tool two purposes.

Matt

 

[Jacob]

Yes on the hatchet. The traditional thing to do in China (learned this from a china fanatic on another forum, but I'm sure it can be found reading on the internet pretty quickly) is to use the hatchet and use the poll directly when needing to use force. When needing something more subtle, they turn the hatchet and strike tools with the side of it instead.

Thats interesting, one tool two purposes.

Matt

Carpenters axe was standard issue with C&G etc. Used for lots of things but mostly for scribing things to fit.

 

[undergroundhunter]

[/quote]Carpenters axe was standard issue with C&G etc. Used for lots of things but mostly for scribing things to fit.[/quote]


I find a hatchet quite a handy tool to have around I carry one on my tool bag as well. Would never use it on chisels though. The hatchet the gent in the video was using must have a specially shaped back and I'm guessing its hardened to a degree.

Matt

 

[ED65]

Indeed. There is a great difference between doing something as a demonstration and doing something so that others can learn from it.

Definitely.

Watching a 1930's Herring Girl for hours would fill you with admiration, but you'd learn very little about gutting fish.

I don't know that that's true, also not sure the analogy is 100% with the majority of tasks in woodworking which aren't done quite so fast!

Certainly it would he harder to learn gutting technique from a Herring Girl working at full speed but that's not to say you couldn't pick up at least some useful how-tos if you watch for a good while paying close attention. In various other contexts watching someone expert at a task doing it the way they usually do it is usually very instructive, even when there is no attempt being made to actually demonstrate.

Some of this will be a reflexes/reaction speed thing between individuals though. The majority of people are within the normal range, which is to say relatively slow. Others are much much faster. A good real-world example being Bruce Lee. Among hundreds of thousands of martial arts students with a burning desire to learn he stood out as being able to pick stuff up almost by osmosis and it was partly down to this.

 

[iNewbie]

Good lord Bruce Lee is entering the mortice thread. Its like a Game of Death with nunchaku as a hammer horror film.

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

How do you know what he s saying? Does he do some vids in English?

Edit Got it, select English subtitles

 

[D_W]

How do you know what he s saying? Does he do some vids in English?

Edit Got it, select English subtitles

I don't know how good the subtitles are. The things I mentioned were mostly based on things posted on another forum by people who understand Chinese.

 

[Paddy Roxburgh]

Just watched a couple of his vids with subtitles, some translations are a bit rough but easy enough to understand. Enjoyed watching him work, he does some fast sawing and chiselling. Love the low tech bench and saw horse, no clamping or vice, at one point he hammers a screwdriver into the bench as a bench hook for sawing. Thanks for the link.
Paddy

 

[RossJarvis]

Something that will make a huge differance is the striking tool. Western joiners use wooden mallets which in my opinion/experience are relatively poor at transferring energy to the chisel.

Last year I hand cut a few mortices in green oak and am far from an expert in this. I was using a 1 1/2" Japanese Tataki chisel (probably not best designed for mortices) and a 28oz framing hammer. This combination worked pretty well. I found it fairly easy to use. I don't like using this hammer and tire quickly using it on big nails, but it was fine chopping the mortice. My heaviest wooden mallet (beech) was just not up to the task.

 

[undergroundhunter]

Something that will make a huge differance is the striking tool. Western joiners use wooden mallets which in my opinion/experience are relatively poor at transferring energy to the chisel.

Last year I hand cut a few mortices in green oak and am far from an expert in this. I was using a 1 1/2" Japanese Tataki chisel (probably not best designed for mortices) and a 28oz framing hammer. This combination worked pretty well. I found it fairly easy to use. I don't like using this hammer and tire quickly using it on big nails, but it was fine chopping the mortice. My heaviest wooden mallet (beech) was just not up to the task.

I personally prefer a nylon faced hammer this way I get most of the benefit of a steel hammer and non of the damage to my chisel handles or workpieces.

Matt