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Thank you everyone for your thoughtful replies. I have a much better understanding of this now.

Interesting. I couldn’t understand why shoulder thickness would matter before, but this makes sense. Thank you.

Thanks for replies, everyone. There are lots of other threads answering “what mortise chisels do you use” so I want to be clear that I’m asking something slightly different.

I’ll try and rephrase...

That’s also been confusing me. In some places, I see it’s 1/3 of the mortised piece, and in other places, 1/3 of the rail! I guess it makes most sense for mortised piece though, bc you wouldn’t want...

Thanks, Jim. But I guess why I’m confused is that some, e.g. Chris Schwarz, say that a 1/4 or 5/16 chisel is all you need. I understand that 4/4 is a common size, but aren’t legs sized 1 1/2 and up...

I’ve seen it suggested by several woodworkers that you can get by with a single mortise chisel, e.g., 1/4 or 5/16. I’m interested in building shaker style furniture, and there are many 1/2 mortises....