Mortising Atachment for Drill Press?

[Andy D Jones]

My gut, with some anecdotal evidence, tells me that there are a lot of drill press mortising attachments, used at most once or twice, sitting around unused ever since, because either better methods/tools were found for cutting mortises, or other methods of joinery were substituted.

-- Andy - Arlington TX

[Ralph Okonieski]

I have one that I bought from Sears 35+ years ago; it has been used once or twice and did a satisfactory job. Just last year I needed to cut some mortises and decided to simply use an undersized drill bit and square the sides with a chisel. Admittedly, only 28 mortises were needed for the project and not real deep ones. This seemed to be a better approach that finding the mortise attachment, squaring, as others have pointed out. Mine is not high quality but did satisfactory.

[Tom M King]

So if you were to set up say for a dozen joints how much time would you estimate you save using a dedicated machine vs setting up your drill press?
Thanks for your reply as all the others

Once you have both routines down, and have all the parts close at hand, setup time of 30 minutes, versus 5 minutes. Never having done either, and have to look for the parts, half a day, versus half an hour. The biggest problem is when you need both a mortiser, and drill press for the same project, and have only one drill press.

[Richard Coers]

I guess a router is a decent option for occasional work. Is it practical to leave the mortise with rounded ends and match with the tenon? Seems easier to hand work the tenon ends round

I just chamfer the tenons. You won't loose any strength and it's much faster. One or two strokes with a chisel and then paring the bottom flush with the shoulder.

[Bill Dufour]

My walker turner 20" drill press the quill is too big for any commercially made mortise adapter. Also I would have to remove my 5/8 chuck and switch to something smaller.
They might be nice on a vertical mill with power downfeed and CNC controls. Problem would be the quill is about 3" diameter.
Bill D

[Andrew Seemann]

My walker turner 20" drill press the quill is too big for any commercially made mortise adapter. Also I would have to remove my 5/8 chuck and switch to something smaller.
They might be nice on a vertical mill with power downfeed and CNC controls. Problem would be the quill is about 3" diameter.
Bill D

If you have a vertical (or horizontal for that matter) mill, you just use an end mill. No need for some fiddly attachment

One shop I worked at had one of those huge old Ekstrom Carlson patternmaker's router/mills. Kind of like a Bridgeport, but the quill was belt driven, and the bit turned way faster than a normal mill. The whole thing was kind of terrifying to fire up.

[Andrew Nemeth]

I agree with most everything posted here. I started out with a drill press attachment and ended up with a freestanding hollow chisel mortiser. I don’t use the floor standing unit much, but since getting it, I’ve never put the attachment back on the drill press. I will say, the most important part of either a dedicated unit or the attachment is learning how to properly sharpen the tooling and setting the proper clearance between the chisel and the drill bit. Set up is a bit finicky for either, but much more so with the drill press attachment. Also without a proper fence, x-y table, and hold down, the drill press attachment is less efficient in use. Finally, my drill press doesn’t have the leverage needed to easily drive the chisel into very hard wood, even with very sharp tooling. I have used a cheater bar to lengthen a handle on the drill press but, if making a deeper mortise in the middle of a longer piece of wood, you can only extend so far before your handle starts running into your workpiece as I need to rotate the handles of my drill press quite a bit to get the quill to move up and down far enough to get to depth. There are work around a to this but, once again, they are cumbersome, and honestly, I’m not sure how good of an idea lengthening the handles of a drill press to gain enough mechanical advantage to properly drive a larger chisel into a harder wood.

However, if you would like to experiment, and it will fit your drill press, I’d be happy to send you my drill press mounted unit for nothing other than the cost shipping. IIRC, the only measurement that is critical to these attachments is the diameter of the ring that mounts it to the quill of the drill press. If I have any duplicate chisels I’ll send those too (although I may have already given those away). If you’re interested, just PM me the diameter of your quill, or the model of your drill press, and your address and I’ll drop it in the mail if it will fit your setup.

Now, just to be fair, I’ve tried to give this thing away multiple times with no takers. Either people don’t like me too much or the drill press attachments do not appear to be a hot item.

[John McKissick]

I agree with most everything posted here. I started out with a drill press attachment and ended up with a freestanding hollow chisel mortiser. I don’t use the floor standing unit much, but since getting it, I’ve never put the attachment back on the drill press. I will say, the most important part of either a dedicated unit or the attachment is learning how to properly sharpen the tooling and setting the proper clearance between the chisel and the drill bit. Set up is a bit finicky for either, but much more so with the drill press attachment. Also without a proper fence, x-y table, and hold down, the drill press attachment is less efficient in use. Finally, my drill press doesn’t have the leverage needed to easily drive the chisel into very hard wood, even with very sharp tooling. I have used a cheater bar to lengthen a handle on the drill press but, if making a deeper mortise in the middle of a longer piece of wood, you can only extend so far before your handle starts running into your workpiece as I need to rotate the handles of my drill press quite a bit to get the quill to move up and down far enough to get to depth. There are work around a to this but, once again, they are cumbersome, and honestly, I’m not sure how good of an idea lengthening the handles of a drill press to gain enough mechanical advantage to properly drive a larger chisel into a harder wood.

However, if you would like to experiment, and it will fit your drill press, I’d be happy to send you my drill press mounted unit for nothing other than the cost shipping. IIRC, the only measurement that is critical to these attachments is the diameter of the ring that mounts it to the quill of the drill press. If I have any duplicate chisels I’ll send those too (although I may have already given those away). If you’re interested, just PM me the diameter of your quill, or the model of your drill press, and your address and I’ll drop it in the mail if it will fit your setup.

Now, just to be fair, I’ve tried to give this thing away multiple times with no takers. Either people don’t like me too much or the drill press attachments do not appear to be a hot item.

PM Sent, a generous offer