Brian Leach
01-07-2019, 2:01 PM
Hello Everyone,
I recently chopped out four 3.5 x 1.5 x 3 mortisies by hand. Looking at the plans for the rest of my project, I was discouraged at the remaining cubic inches of wood that still needed to be removed. I sadly went inside and researched a mortising machine so that my project would not sit unfinished.
I settled on the Powermatic PM701. It seems that many of the machines in this class have a max chisel shank diameter of 5/8 in. The PM701 has a max shank dia of 3/4 in.
So, I ordered a 3/4 in. chisel from Lee Valley. I went to do a test mortise in a piece of maple, but was immediately told by the machine / performance that something was not right.
The auger smoked pretty bad going in and the chisel would not further descend once the chisel encountered the wood. I do not want to force the machine as I understand that I am working at the maximum of its capacity. I could not get the chisel to move into the wood at all. I tried a few different times with the mindset of "let's try one more time, maybe I wasn't pulling down on the lever hard enough...". I don't want to break a tooth off the rack.
This is my first mortise with the machine, so there could be a variety of reasons that it isn't working. I believe that I set up the machine correctly. I believe that the chisel / auger is reasonably sharp.
I did not check to see that the chisel is perfectly square to the fence (since it is just a test piece). Is this alignment critical?
Is is just that a 3/4 in. mortise is at the maximum capacity of the machine? And the fact that the wood is hard maple means that it just isn't going to go? Should I pre-drill all of my mortises? If I were to test cut a smaller mortise (like 1/2 in.), should the smaller tool go right in cutting?
I recently chopped out four 3.5 x 1.5 x 3 mortisies by hand. Looking at the plans for the rest of my project, I was discouraged at the remaining cubic inches of wood that still needed to be removed. I sadly went inside and researched a mortising machine so that my project would not sit unfinished.
I settled on the Powermatic PM701. It seems that many of the machines in this class have a max chisel shank diameter of 5/8 in. The PM701 has a max shank dia of 3/4 in.
So, I ordered a 3/4 in. chisel from Lee Valley. I went to do a test mortise in a piece of maple, but was immediately told by the machine / performance that something was not right.
The auger smoked pretty bad going in and the chisel would not further descend once the chisel encountered the wood. I do not want to force the machine as I understand that I am working at the maximum of its capacity. I could not get the chisel to move into the wood at all. I tried a few different times with the mindset of "let's try one more time, maybe I wasn't pulling down on the lever hard enough...". I don't want to break a tooth off the rack.
This is my first mortise with the machine, so there could be a variety of reasons that it isn't working. I believe that I set up the machine correctly. I believe that the chisel / auger is reasonably sharp.
I did not check to see that the chisel is perfectly square to the fence (since it is just a test piece). Is this alignment critical?
Is is just that a 3/4 in. mortise is at the maximum capacity of the machine? And the fact that the wood is hard maple means that it just isn't going to go? Should I pre-drill all of my mortises? If I were to test cut a smaller mortise (like 1/2 in.), should the smaller tool go right in cutting?