Mortising Advice - Couple More Questions

[Vaughn McMillan]

Looks like I'll be building a viking bed for my LOML's brother, and I need advice on cutting a lot of mortises. He wants something along the lines of the beds shown here:

http://www.ravensgard.org/prdunham/Gbed.html

He wants it to be built so it can be broken down and transported easily. Construction-wise, I don't see any problems except the multitudes of mortises involved. (I plan to talk to the Carvewright guys about jobbing out the headboard carving.)

I've cut a few mortises by hand, and have no desire to do this many of 'em neanderthally. That leaves a chisel mortiser or building a router-based setup, and squaring things up by hand. Once I start this project, I want to get it done quickly, since it's big, and I don't want to lose the garage space any longer than I have to. I'm thinking the mortising machine would be faster than the router jig & chisel approach. I realize benchtop mortisers don't do as clean of cut as a router, but then again the chip control from a mortiser seems easier to do than the dust control from the router.

My budget can handle a benchtop mortiser, and I can get the Shop Fox W1671 locally for about $212 including tax. I figure having mortises in my bag of shop tricks will only open the possibilities for future projects, so I figure I'll get use out of it after this project is done. I don't currently have space or money for a standalone mortiser, and the Shop Fox seems to be a good "middle of the pack" choice, especially at the local price.

So...the questions: Does this seem like a project worthy of purchasing a mortiser? Any reason not to get the Shop Fox for $212 instead of any of the others in the $200 to $300 range? (Amazon has the Delta 14-651 for about $257.)

Fire away, and thanks in advance -

- Vaughn

[Gary Keedwell]

Howdy~ I read the other day that Powermatic has a new model that raises the bar on bench style mortisers. They said it feels like a floor model and has features galore. The set-back? $ 400. Not bad for something that will probably last a lifetime in casual use.

Gary K.

[Ben Roman]

I love my Shop Fox !!!! Well spent money !!

[Alan Turner]

Vaughn,
I certainly would not want to talk a fellow WW'er out of a new tool, but in this case my feeling is that I would make the dust, and go with the router. All of your mortises here are through mortises, in what looks like 3/4" or possibly slightly thicker stock. A HCM will blow out the back side of the through mortises. Hence, you will need to cut them half way through, and them flip the board and cut from the other side to finish. This is a lot of work for this many mortises. I would think a router with a good edge guide, and some careful chisel work, would give you a better, and faster, job. This could be an opportunity for a Microfence unless you already have a really good edge guide. Note that on the one cross grain mortise on the headboard, the set-up will be tricky on the HCM.
I say all of this even though a router is one of my least favorite tools. Since it appears on first glance that there are only about 3 different sizes of mortises in terms of length, I might cut a pattern of BB ply, and install a moveable edge guide on it, and do some pattern routing on this. It is awfully accurate and once jigged up, quite fast.
One other thing -- are you sure that the HCM you are using will handle a 3/4" chisel and bit set? This is a pretty large cut on a smaller HCM.
My 2 cents.

[Mike Cutler]

Vaughn. I fininshed a project last summer that had over 400 M&T joints, over 40 of them were thru mortises similar to what you are considering.

A through mortise has a 1 in 6 pitch to the outside edge of the mortise, to give the tenon enough grab, and not blow the wood out. With the mortiser that you are specing, all of these through mortises will need to be finished by hand to get this angle. I used a variety of files to accomplish the task.
My mortiser is essentially the same as that one,Delta 14-651, and I had to use a 3/8" chisel, a 1/2" had too much overlap, and I don't think it could have put a 3/4" chisel through Jatoba.
In retrospect bro' ,if I had to do it again, I would have bought the Powermatic floor model with the tilting head. For what you want to do, I would at least look for a tilting head benchtop mortiser. Finishing all of those through mortises with a file was a little less than thrilling woodworking experience.

[tod evans]

vaughn, a bit of advice on blowing out the backside, leave the stock oversized and either cut or plane whatever blowout occurs away, don`t forget to use a backerboard to reduce the blowout too......02 tod

[Richard Wolf]

Some thing to think about, for the mortises on the bed rails, why not rip the board, cut them on a table saw and glue the cutoff back on. Of course you still have some left on the ends to do buy hand.

Richard

[Steve Braman]

Vaughn-
I am in the slow process of constructing my first real project, a blanket chest of small (odd) proportions to fit behind the back door and hold hats and mittens. A little out of season, but we moved into a new house and house projects have delayed most things. Back to something relevent. I started by making a jig to use a router to make the tenons, but was not getting the joint I wanted so I broke down and bought a tenon jig for the TS. Couldn't ask for better results. SWMBO came out to the shop and saw me chopping the mortises by hand. "Isn't there a tool for that? Why don't you have it? I owe you something for Valentine's so go order one online." So long story, long. She bought me the Delta bench top from Amazon. Miraculously it showed up in one piece and I managed to make some test cuts last week. They came out pretty tight and it will definitely work for my needs. Unfortunately our kitchen cabinets came in 2-3 weeks early and I have spent every minute since then preparing the walls and hanging cabinets. I'll post something on this later.

[Maurice Ungaro]

Vaughn, I'll echo what Alan stated, plus add the thought of using a DP with some Forstner bits to hog out the mortises. After that, finish with some sharp chisels.

[Dan Oliphant]

Vaughn, the advise you are getting here is very good, with that said, combine Allen's, Richards, and Maurices's comments into the planning and layout phase of the bed. All three techniques will help reduce the project construction time and make the project more enjoyable to boot.

[Jerry Olexa]

I've used/have benchtop mortiser and router. Looks like all of these are through mortises. Some old fashioned advice: simply drill thru and clean up rest w chisel. Might be simple and save you some $.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Advice from the pros here on the board carries a lot of weight. For clarification, I should mention that when I've done mortises "by hand", I did most the hogging out with a Forstner buit, then squared things up with a sharp chisel. (I've also tried it with a not-so-sharp chisel, but we won't talk about that.) The times I've done them, I wasn't real pleased with the results, but it's most likely due to lack of practice. It also seems like a lot of work, but that's a personal problem. ;) If it was easy, everybody would want to do them.

Richard's suggestion of ripping the rails and using the TS to cut half mortises on each half dawned on me late last night, and that's probably the approach I'll take there to make sure they match and line up.

I've not done mortises with a router, so I think I'll experiment a bit with those to get a feel for things. I've got the P-C micro-adjust edge guide, but I need to go pick up a good spiral upcut bit. There's nothing in the viking bed rulebook that says the tenons need to be squared, so I'm considering using a bullnose bit (or a roundover bit on each side) to round the tenons to match the routered mortises. Seems that'd be faster than squaring up the routered mortises. I need to go back and look at Mark Singer's Balboa Door thread to see his mortising jig. Anybody have pics of their mortising jigs? (Dino's EZ-Smart system looks like another possibility.)

All that said, I still haven't completely talked myself out of a new tool. If this project isn't a candidate, what sort of projects do you folks use a benchtop mortiser on? Or is it one of those tools you bought, but don't use now that you've discovered a better way?

Thanks again -

- Vaughn

[tod evans]

vaughn, i don`t have a benchtop unit anymore but i do use the mortiser quite a bit. i say if you can justify the purchase to yourself go for it, you`ll use it...02 tod

[Dan Oliphant]

I use my benchtop unit on every piece that requires M&Ts. In my opinion, unless you like to spend a lot of quality time with your chisels and mallet, then a mortiser is a very usefull tool.

[Jacob Snow]

When i that bed (in the SCA here), instead of doing all the through M&Ts i ended up putting a rail in the inside of the side slats and kind a modified dovetail to help keep the sides from pulling away from the slats. I did M&ts in the "headboard". I will post some pictures later if you care to see them. Not sure if you wanted to do all the m&ts for the look, but the inside rails sure made it easy. BTW my bed was designed to be broke down to take to camping events.

[Charlie Plesums]

... There's nothing in the viking bed rulebook that says the tenons need to be squared, so I'm considering using a bullnose bit (or a roundover bit on each side) to round the tenons to match the routered mortises. Seems that'd be faster than squaring up the routered mortises. ...
The bullnose or roundover bit works a lot less well that you would hope... remember that you can't do the full length of the tenon because the diameter of the router bit must be kept away from the shoulder. You will also need a jig to be sure the bit doesn't pull the tenon in and round over the shoulder (DAMHIKT). I found that using the roundover to define the shape of the tenon defined the curve required, but still left 80% of the tenon to be cut (rounded) with a hand chisel.