How noisy is your mortising machine?

[Alan Tolchinsky]

I've had a Shop Fox machine for a long time and the one thing that always bothered me about is was the noise. It's mostly from the drill bit hitting the inside of the chisel. Even when I let the bit hang out from the bottom of the chisel that things makes such a racket. I even tried to lube it and that didn't work. Maybe my chisels/bits are too cheap? I do notice when I tighten down the chisel it moves slightly so I can't get a perfect fit between the bit and chisel. What's your experience with these. Again it's not the machine itself but mostly the bit/chisel interface.

[Chris Tsutsui]

I have a delta hollow chisel mortiser with lee valley chisels.

I use a dry lube and there's little noise when it's idling in the air, but once I start to drill and and maybe after a short time there is a higher pitched screaching noise coming from the bit.

At first I thought this may be abnormal but then I saw Scott Phillips do some mortising with the same machine on television and it was making the same noises as my machine.

[Will Overton]

Mine is This noisy. :)

[Stephen Ash]

I have the benchtop Powermatic machine with the Lee Valley chisels, and I've also experienced that screeching occasionally. Dry lube helps to some degree, but I've found that it's often due to overheating because the bit is clogged, so backing off, or even shutting down and manually clearing it usually solves the problem, temporarily. I've also had success with *reducing* the bit / chisel gap slightly, I suppose because this helps to keep the chiseled waste smaller and easier to clear.


Regards,
Steve

[Shawn Pixley]

Mine (Powermatic Benchtop) is about as loud as my drill press (thats to say pretty quiet). I do sharpen and tune my bit /chisels

[Neil Brooks]

Grizzly benchtop mortiser. OEM bits.

I've "thoroughly" sharpened and polished my chisels, and done a fair job of sharpening my bits (lemme' know if you need me to dig up the link for those articles....).

I tend to 'lube' my bits with beeswax, and use Woodglide (http://www.woodglide.com/index.php) on the chisels, when cutting.

Pretty darned quiet, actually. No screech.

I mean ... nowhere NEAR as quiet as Will Overton's, but .... ;)

[Callan Campbell]

I sold my benchtop Shop Fox, and was soured on Mortisers for a bit, then looked and poked around a year or two later, realizing that the Shop Fox was one of the few models with the fast 3450 RPM motor, when compared to the majority that have the 1725 RPM motor. I now own my first Powermatic, their floor model with the tilting table. Much quieter, but also much larger and more money than the Shop Fox.:rolleyes:

[jared herbert]

I am just in the process of getting an old old delta mortising machine going. I bought some new chisels and was wondering how to tune them up so they dont get destroyed right away. I understand they are kind of touchy. THanks in advance. Jared

[jared herbert]

thanks Neal.

[Neil Brooks]

Here ya' be....

http://blogs.popularwoodworking.com/editorsblog/Hollow+Mortise+Chisel+Tuneup.aspx

Another piece of learning that I picked up ... somewhere ... is:

Many sources recommend that you have the thickness of a nickel or a dime between the flat of the auger bit and the points of the chisel.

Testing revealed that MORE is better.

According to one test, a gap the thickness of a nickel—roughly 0.072” thick—results in operating temperatures roughly 40 or 50 degrees higher than if you increase that gap to 0.117” (the gap provided by the built-in spacer, on the Powermatic PM701 mortiser, used in their testing).

I have a 0.125” gage block that I will NOW use to set the gap between bit and chisel.

Going any further than that, obviously, creates fairly significant risk of breaking the bit.

HTH,
Neil