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Thread: Mortiser or Router?

  1. #31
    Julie-
    What do you wish to do?

    For doors, and larger work, a Domino (the 700) has been nice for me, because I can take the tool to the work as has been stated.

    Mortises don't find their way into all of my projects, so in my small shop, a portable solution like Domino is good.

    The benefit of a Domino over a router is that you'll need a dedicated template for each situation with the router. For Domino, the fence and pins on the fence make referencing and alignment easier.

    It's not that it's any better than other solutions, but it is fast and quite versatile. It's worthy of consideration.

  2. #32
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Utterback View Post
    For some unknown reason, I have not tried to use a router. I guess I also fear trying to balance it on the narrow surface.
    The solution to that is to hold some other boards up on either side of the board that you are routing the mortice into. That gives you a wider surface to balance the router on. It's also a good idea to have the other boards extend past the one you are routing so that your router doesn't take a nose dive when you run off the end of your board with the router base.

  3. #33
    Join Date
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    WNY
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    Quote Originally Posted by Marshall K Harrison View Post
    The solution to that is to hold some other boards up on either side of the board that you are routing the mortice into. That gives you a wider surface to balance the router on. It's also a good idea to have the other boards extend past the one you are routing so that your router doesn't take a nose dive when you run off the end of your board with the router base.

    The better solution is to build my horizontal router mortiser.
    It will be the best $100 you ever spend on woodworking.
    You will never fear having to make mortises again, especially if you have to cut a few hundred of them. Every one will be accurately located, have clean, parallel sides, and require zero clean-up afterwards. Just look at the photos and video in the link I provided.

    John

  4. #34
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
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    Taking another look at what was occurring to create ratty edges, I noticed the gap in the fence, right where the drilling is done, allows for the unsupported end of the board to move. As you move through the mortise and the board contacts the other side of the fence, the mortise slot stays pretty true.

    So I did a "tune up" on the machine and chisel bits. I honed the exterior chisels on a water stone to 8000 and used the included cone sharpener to sharpen the inside. Then I took two milled pieces of maple and used them to sandwich the board so it can't move front to back. The next mortise was much better but not being satisfied with better, I took a mortise chisel to it and cleaned it up. The mortise looked pretty good. Next, of course, is to set up the tenoning jig. Once completed, I created a tenon and the fit was excellent.

    And after all this was done I had to ask myself, "Do I really want to make 40 frame and panel doors and drawer fronts using this method?" There would be no profile on the interior of the rails and stiles - Mission style. The doors and drawers I am gluing up today for the island have a Shaker profile, but the island is being finished differently than the carcases on the rest of the cabinets so that's no big deal. They were created with a Shaker router bit set. And I have that rail coping sled that works like a charm. And I've got the dust collection at the router table really dialed in well.

    Hmmmmmm........

    The easiest method is to use the router bit set. I've got everything I need for that. The only down side is I'll have to accept getting only one rail/stile board from each 5" wide board I have. But I have enough wood. The cut offs I can use for panel glue ups.

    I think you can guess which way I'm leaning.
    “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness..." - Mark Twain

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by David Utterback View Post
    Recently exceeded the capacity of my bench top mortise machine with boards wider than 5". Switched to the drill press and bench chisels to cut the mortises in stiles for 2 exterior doors. They are about 3" deep. For some unknown reason, I have not tried to use a router. I guess I also fear trying to balance it on the narrow surface.
    Simple solution, clamp other boards to the sides to give yourself a wider area to balance on.

  6. #36
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
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    Julie,

    Have you considered using Bridle Joints on those cabinet doors? That seems like it would lend itself to Shaker style. Pretty quick, once set up on the table saw, and you will sure have a strong joint.
    Rick Potter

    DIY journeyman,
    FWW wannabe.
    AKA Village Idiot.

  7. #37
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
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    I have the large floor mounted General hollow chisel mortiser, and find that the sliding table makes all the difference in the world. Once the stops are set you can bang out lots of parts very quickly without having to do any measuring or marking. Perhaps not quite as quick as a Domino, but pretty close. I fooled with router setups over the years and never found one that allowed me to work quickly and with confidence-- Undoubtedly user error, but something would always wobble, giving me wavy sides. That was true both with the router table setups I tried and with jigs that I attempted to guide the router.

    The key to making the General work well was to throw away the stock chisels and replace them with the Lee Valley "premium" chisels. Sharpening and flattening the sides of the stock chisels (which took forever!) got me 3/4 of the way to good performance, the Japanese chisels with just a little touch up of the edges made mortising a pleasure.

    Just for fun or when I only have a couple to do I hand chop them. It's surprisingly quick. I'm on the fence about whether drilling out most of the waste is a better method or not. Mostly I don't drill and just chisel them out. Very large mortises, like for bed frames, I will drill first.

  8. #38
    Join Date
    Dec 2008
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    Ouray Colorado
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    It’s true the heavy floor mount chisel mortisers are night and day difference from the bench top ones. We have a bench top and even with sharp tools it is painfull. I call it the P38 because every time I use it I want to send it flying to the dumpster!

    We finally picked up a old Wadkin DM and it is a pleasure to use with all adjustments precise and easy. It has become our go to mortiser for low volume work where fast setup is desired. We have a slot mortiser and Domino. They have their benefits for a lot of work but the round end pretty much limits you to loose mortises in production work unless you have a method to round the tenons. We also have a Maka and they make the cleanest mortise but some serious money for the machine and tooling. Not the easiest to set up either.

    89E73EC6-9B7F-416D-97BD-5EC072412562.jpg

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  9. #39
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
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    Perth, Australia
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    The advantage of a router is that one may use an upcut blade for a very long time (measured in months or years, especially if carbide) before it needs to be sharpened. My impression (and limited experience) of a mortiser is that they need frequent sharpening (measured in minutes or hours), especially in very hard woods, and that sharpening is not an easy task.

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  10. #40
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    Nov 2003
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    Central North Carolina
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    I've gone the full route, from chopping out the mortises with a hammer and mortising chisel to using a mortiser and square chisels, to a shop made jig and router, to a Trend mortising jig and router, and finally to a Leigh FMT jig and router. I've no need to go further. The router and FMT do both the mortise and the tenon with the same setup, and there is a fine adjustment on the jig to tune the size of the mortise and tenon for exactly the fit that I want. The trend jig didn't have this adjustment feature and was much more difficult to set up. I have smooth sided mortises and perfect fitting tenons without any fussing, and they are repeatable, so I can cut 20 mortises and then the matching tenons, and all will fit together without any fine tuning. I don't even have to match the mortise to the tenon, because all are the same. A CNC might be better for speed, but I have no room for one, and my FMT does everything that I need. I bought it when facing a job that required about 1600 mortise and tenon joints. It saved me and paid for itself with that one job and that was almost 10 years ago. It still gets used frequently, but for much smaller jobs.

    When mortising with a router and any router mortising jig, it helps to plunge cut many holes and then go back and clean them out to final dimension. This is in the FMT instructions, but helps when using any router jig to cut accurate mortises.

    For long tenons cut on the FMT I quickly learned to limit the router plunge depth to less than 1" and then go back at the desired depth to cut the remainder of the tenon. The FMT vacuum port clogs if the chips are longer than about 1". Cut the long tenons in two passes at increasing depth and there is no clogging problem. I also added a 6" X 12" piece of 1/8" clear Lexan to the top plate so it hangs down in front of the jig using mating pieces of Velcro. This is NOTso you can watch the cut, which is dangerous. I use it to keep most of the chips off of me when cutting the front side of the tenon. The vacuum seems to catch some of them after the bounce off the Lexan, but it's primary purpose is to keep most of them from hitting me.

    Charley
    Last edited by Charles Lent; 12-30-2017 at 5:31 PM.

  11. #41
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    Once again I am late to the thread. I do mortises many ways. For most non-large mortises, I will chop by hand or use my domino. For large mortises (like say the shoji doors I will be making), I use my powermatic benchtop mortiser. The secret I have found is to use good bits that are kept sharp. Also when they get hot, stop and let them cool. I get very clean cuts from my mortiser unlike the ragged edge you report. I favor the LV mortiser bits and I sharpen them inside and out. I don’t know if I have photos of the last door mortises I made. I’ll check.
    Shawn

    "no trees were harmed in the creation of this message, however some electrons were temporarily inconvenienced."

    "I resent having to use my brain to do your thinking"

  12. #42
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    What I've learned is the benchtop mortiser isn't what I thought it was when I bought it some 7 years ago. I had read about needing good quality Japanese chisels so I bought the Powermatic premium chisels. All total it was a $700 investment because I thought I would be getting the same results often seen in videos. What I didn't know at the time was the importance of locking in the board so there is no movement as you work through the mortise. The PM701 cannot do that out of the box.

    I've also learned the router is a far more accurate tool to use if you have an accurate jig. The only drawback is it can't cut square corners and that was why I thought a mortiser was the way to go. But what dawned on me, as I thought this whole effort through, was this was more about achieving a hand cut look that it was about anything else. And it you are making blind mortises, what difference does it make if the corners are square or round? You are the only one who will ever know.

    I suppose if I had a full size mortiser and something like Powermatic's tenoning jig (see below), it might be fun to make mortise and tenon frames because the frustration levels would be kept to a minimum.

    “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness..." - Mark Twain

  13. #43
    saddly they made the bit sizes undersize on those Japanese chisels. I had bought Wadkin before which fit perfectly, they didnt work fantastic but were fine but were too expensive and too much of a pain to get from England to the US and purchased from there. Wish Lee Valley had had a person who knew their stuff when they ordered 1000's of them.

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Warren Lake View Post
    saddly they made the bit sizes undersize on those Japanese chisels. I had bought Wadkin before which fit perfectly, they didnt work fantastic but were fine but were too expensive and too much of a pain to get from England to the US and purchased from there. Wish Lee Valley had had a person who knew their stuff when they ordered 1000's of them.
    Hmm, just mic'd my 1/2 LV hollow chisel - came in at 0.501" Not sure why it should matter anyway, since tenons can always be cut to fit mortises.
    -- Jim

    Use the right tool for the job.

  15. #45
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    Undersize relative to what? Have to admit I've never measured them. I make the mortises and then cut the tenons to fit on the table saw, trimming with a shoulder plane as necessary. Nothing in the process demands a particular size.

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