Swan-Neck Chisels & Mortising

[Doug Mason]

I've been makingmy hand-cut mortises lately and am becoming more proficient and quicker; however, in Tage Fried's joinery book, I notice that he mentions that he cleans-out the bottoms of his mortises with a swan-neck chisel. But I don't even bother--as long as the tenon comes close to the bottom.

Do others find the swan-neck chisel useful in hand-mortising? Or just a waste of money for another tool that will collect dust?

[Don C Peterson]

I've been makingmy hand-cut mortises lately and am becoming more proficient and quicker; however, in Tage Fried's joinery book, I notice that he mentions that he cleans-out the bottoms of his mortises with a swan-neck chisel. But I don't even bother--as long as the tenon comes close to the bottom.

Do others find the swan-neck chisel useful in hand-mortising? Or just a waste of money for another tool that will collect dust?

I've never used one, but i'm kind of tempted to get one. Sometimes in deep mortises I think a swan-neck chisel might make levering out the waste a bit easier. The reason I haven't picked one up yet is I'm not totally convinced that it would save more time than would be taken up switching chisels back and forth.

I can't see them being all that useful for cleaning out the bottom. Who cares if the bottom is a bit rough?

[harry strasil]

I have a swan neck I made, but very seldom ever use it, what I found more useful was when doing large mortices for timber framing, I made a crank neck chisel, basically a round rod bent at 90 degrees a ways in from the end and a small flat chisel end welded onto the end, works great.

I will bring my swan neck down tuesday for the luncheon Don.

[Pam Niedermayer]

I don't use a swan neck, but may for timber framing where big mortises need to be cleaned out.

However, I use shoji bottom cleaning chisels all the time for furniture. Here are the ones offered by Hida, the top one is bottom cleaning.http://www.hidatool.com/shop/shop.html
Choose Woodworking, Chisels, scroll about half way down the page for the Special Chisels.

Pam

[James Mittlefehldt]

I did a project about a year ago that required 42, two inch deep mortises, and I bought a swan neck chisel for that project. It worked very well in the deeper mortises, as you could lever it against the end of the mortise and not distort the top opening.

I doubt it would be that useful for shallower mortises, but if cutting deeper ones than yes it is quite good.