Best start with mortise and tenons?

[travis howe]

After my first few months with woodworking, I have a large passion for arts and crafts / mission / craftsman style furniture...

What is a good place to start with tools for mortise and tenons for someone that can appreciate spending a few extra bucks on nice tools.

There is a nice jet tabletop mortise machine here locally.... I have the typical small shop...nice router table setup, table saw, routers, drill press etc....

thanks all.

r/t

[Paul Ryan]

Travis


There are a whole bunch of different ways to skin a cat, or make mortises. I did my 1st project with a lot of tendons a few weeks ago. 52 tendons for one bed frame. I bought a jet JFM-5 in Dec, it is a floor stand mortiser but I basically stole it. That deal isn't around any more. The floor stand mortiser is nice because it is so easy to do mulitple mortises with out having to reset or move the wood piece when making the next hole. The problem with a hollow chisel mortiser is that they don't make a very clean hole. It requires some clean up once the hole is cut. Now if you have a decent router you can use one of those, but you need a jig. Right now if you go to the deals and discounts page there is a thread about the orginal mortise pal. It is selling for $99 which is a good deal, if there are any of them left. There are pros and cons with the router mortises too. The holes are clean, how ever the router makes a saw dust mess. The jig has to be moved for each mortise. The $99 jig only does 2" thick stock, and you are limited to your mortise depth, buy your bit. If I were you and I wanted to keep my price low, I would buy the mortise pal though. If you don't have a router, it is time to get one. If you do all you need is a couple of bit and you should be ready. The $99 is a heck of a deal. If you buy a bench top machine it is going to cost you more, and I dont think they are any better than routed mortises. Just My .02

[Lance Norris]

The problem with a hollow chisel mortiser is that they don't make a very clean hole. It requires some clean up once the hole is cut.

I dont agree with this statement. I have a Delta benchtop mortiser that I use all the time and it does a good job. The only area where there is any tear-out is on the bottom where the chisel/bit comes through. If you use a support board underneath the piece you are mortising, then there is no tearout on the actual piece you are cutting.

I started making mortises years ago with a drill and chisel. Benchtop/floor standing mortise machines are nice, but certainly not neccesary. A lot of pride comes from a project where all the joints are handcut. Perfectly square mortice and tenon joints arent neccesary for a project to be beautiful. I say do them by hand, and later if you find making them is a real pain, buy a benchtop.

[Paul Ryan]

I may have not written my post properly. What I meant by clean up is inside of the square hole. Maybe it is just my bits, but ones the hole is cut (not a through cut) you need to clean out the inside of the hole. The corner bottoms need to be scraped out, and the left over junk in the hole, at least that is my experience. The hole is cut but the sides are rough and the bottoms aren't smooth. The last mortises I cut if they were about 1/4" deeper than necessary I could just assemble. But if I only cut it 1/8 deeper I needed to spend a few minutes per hole to get the tendon to site flush because of the crap left in the hole that didn't just blow out with compressed air.

[glenn bradley]

And then there's the router method. Super clean flat bottomed mortises. Usable with fixed or floating tenons. I used to drill a series of holes and then chisel the waste to complete the mortise and that is a fine method. I sometimes use the tablesaw or router table to cut the tenon and either of those work well.

I got it in my head that I wanted a hollow chisel mortiser but by the time you got a decent machine and quality chisels it got reasonably pricey. I went with the Mortise Pal and have moved more and more to floating tenons for those joints that don't show but need the strength. For through tenons or showey work I still do it by hand. I enjoy the intamacy of that type of work.

[Bill Huber]

There is always the Mortise Pal, it is really nice and does a great job with a rounter, no clean up at all. You are using loose tenions and I guess that is a big difference.

I have a small shop and for me the MP was great, takes up no room and does a good job.