X-Y table for mortiser

[Stan Calow]

I was reading the other thread about benchtop mortisers, and the discussion of adding an x-y table caught my eye. How do you fit one on a mortiser without losing all your clearance under the bit. I did my due diligence and searched on youtube and google, but didn't find any actual guidance on how to do this. I have a Delta 14-651. Looking at the HF table. The riser for this mortiser only adds 1 3/4" - is that enough?

[Cary Falk]

I made a 4" hickory riser block for my Steel City morticer when I needed some extra height. It has a similar build to your Delta.. I have seen many pictures of the HF morticer in the past that had the base rotated 180 degrees and then mounted on aa piece of plywood elevated to have room to bolt the xy table below..

[Mike Cutler]

I was reading the other thread about benchtop mortisers, and the discussion of adding an x-y table caught my eye. How do you fit one on a mortiser without losing all your clearance under the bit. I did my due diligence and searched on youtube and google, but didn't find any actual guidance on how to do this. I have a Delta 14-651. Looking at the HF table. The riser for this mortiser only adds 1 3/4" - is that enough?

Stan
Have the 14-651, with an x-y vise. The OEM riser is not enough to give back the clearance under the chisel that is needed if you attach an x-y vise.
Mine is no longer on it's original base, but is on a very heavy, maple platform. It's not the prettiest, or most elegant of solutions, but it is very stable. I can take a picture for you in the morning.
Here is link to the basic setup. There are also quite a few members here that have done the same mod, but I'm striking out finding any with photo's.

http://www.woodcentral.com/articles/shop/articles_414.shtml

I'm not sure if I should have posted a link to another forum. If I wasn't, apologies in advance.

[John Lanciani]

When I had the same setup with a Delta mortiser I just used two of the factory riser blocks and bought longer bolts.

[Stan Calow]

Thanks guys - two good solutions. Mike, I would like to see a photo of your setup. Anything to make mortises less painful is great. This is why I contribute to SMC.

[Mike Cutler]

Stan
Here are some pic's of how I did it. It's kind of crude.
At the time I was "modeling" it, and making cabinets at the same time, and it worked really well, so I never took it apart and made it nice.
The base is the remnants of a wooden work bench top that a co worker left out in the elements next to his garage. Most of it delaminated, and went up my wood stove, but some parts of the top were still good.


These first two are just a complete view.
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This one shows the sliding vise more clearly. This vise is a real piece of junk. Harbor Freight is probably a significant step up. You can see that I needed to use a feeler gauge as a shim for the jaws. There are also feeler gauges used as shims under the base, and I used an .001 to tighten up a sliding way. I want to get a nicer vise, but as is, this one is linear and square to the chisel in all directions. It took some time to get it there. ;)
There is about 6 1/2" of full travel along the X axis. Those mortises are about 4" long. I don't know what the Y axis travel is. I can measure it for you if that's important.
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This is a speed square displaying the height under the chisel. At the time I was making rails for cabinet doors in the Greene and Greene, cloud lift motif, and they were a little bit over 4" tall in the centers of the cloud lift pattern. Apologies for the poor picture quality. That chisel is installed facing forward, and is lost on the background of the black way in the back. There is a little over 5 1/2" height form vise to chisel.
399331

If you do choose to go this route, I would buy a better vise than the one I have. I think this one was < $25.00 at the time and required a fair bit of work to get it to function properly, and accurately enough, for an X-Y vise used on wood. No way it could ever be used for metal work. A machinist would probably throw it out the window, or use it for a doorstop within minutes of trying to use it.
There is also a mod for the vise that reverses the ball and pins for the cranks so they do not interfere with each other. I didn't do it.
The biggest contributor to me going this route was to put the mortises in long pieces of material. The piece of material clamped in the base is about 36" long and is a cabinet corner piece I messed up. Some of the other pieces I needed to mortise were 8' long. That much length, trying to be held down with the OEM clamp, just did not work. Archimedes took over.

[J. Greg Jones]

I too went with two risers and longer bolts. I actually can go with three risers for really tall stock, but in around 13 years with this setup I have never needed to change it from what it looks like here. The vise is from HF, and I did flip the vise jaws around so that they are on the same side as the front crank handle. I've been very pleased with how everything works.

[Stan Calow]

Thanks for the photos guys. I will get the vise first and see what might work for me. This was very helpful. Like a lightbulb going off.

[steven sherman]

Woodsmith has an x y table build

https://www.woodsmithplans.com/plan/precision-mortising-jig/

[Bill Carey]

Thanks for the photos guys. I will get the vise first and see what might work for me. This was very helpful. Like a lightbulb going off.

Make that 2 light bulbs. I started the bench top mortiser thread, and got a lot of good advice and insight. And decided to go with the floor model from Baileigh. But I'm re-thinking that after reading this thread. I've never used a mortiser, and spending a thousand bucks on a tool I have no knowledge of has had me a bit on edge the last few days. It's one thing to spend a G on something you know, but it can turn out to be an awfully expensive tuition payment if you learn you might have been better off with something else. I'm cancelling the order for the Baileigh and going with something cheaper. If I want to upgrade there is always CL to recoup some of the expense. But then at least I'll know what I want, based on some experience. This thread has really made it clear that there is a world of options regarding customizing a mortiser. Thanks for the info, and more pictures of your setups would be great.

[Mike Cutler]

Bill
A floor standing mortiser is nice. The weight alone and the clamping mechanisms I've seen make them really attractive. If you knew you were going to be doing a lot of mortising on a regular basis. the floor standing units would be the way to go.
I was like you when I bought my benchtop. I was looking at the Powermatic units back then, and got really close to pulling the trigger. There was 14-651 model on sale at my local WoodCraft, which was where I was going to buy the Powermatic, and I just kind of though, hey, for a third the price, maybe I can make this work, and it did.

The OEM hold down on my 14-651 was just awful. It would give and slip and the material would end up at an angle with the chisel stuck. Thank goodness I found a link to the X-Y vise setup, because I was getting ready to take it back.
In the end though, it's worked out very well for me. I've done a lot of mortises with machine, in all kinds of dense, tropical hardwoods and it's done the job.
One thing you will need to cobble together is some type of a vacuum setup. The normal setup for the chisel is to have the open side facing right or left. If you do this, with no vacuum attached, the debris just falls back into the mortise, and makes more work for the bit. On mine I have the vacuum going in from the "frontish direction", so that is why the chisel opening is facing forward. It ended up being a better angle for me. I also have an air gun at hand when I use it.

[Brian Holcombe]

I saw a claimed ‘nos’ powermatic 400 on Craigslist recently, I think in PA.