Getting an Old Pigsticker Ready for Work

[D_W]

For anyone wondering why I'm being such a prig about mortise size, here's the point. The oval bolstered chisels seem to be little used for reasons stated here.

When I got my first chisels, I used them to cut mortises that were better cut with a firmer, but I did it because I had them. I also followed a method that was bevel toward the waste side. Warm fuzzies - new tools, and mortises made.

At some point, I got a socket mortise chisel that was sash in size and it was trapezoidal (i had a LN mortise chisel set early on - they were dead square and in sash mortises, who cares - in hardwood mortises 1 1/2 inches deep, they become a real pain). The socket mortise was faster to use in cabinet mortises than teh oval bolstered chisels, and it registered well enough with enough height to make it easy to cut a mortise that didn't suffer faults of wander.

So, if a small relatively common chisel does better (less effort), why bother with the pigsticker. The mortise needs to be both long enough and deep enough.

 

[Lefley]

Well it's fairly obvious - it's a 1/2" mortice and it's a 1/2" mortice chisel. A lucky coincidence? In fact a 1/2" mortice is precisely "the fairly narrow application of these chisels" i.e. 1/2" mortice chisels. It's not really a coincidence!
Would a diagram help? A 1/2" chisel fits very neatly into a 1/2" mortice.
You really do not know what you are talking about do you? It shows and it is really tedious.
n.b. a "sash" mortice chisel is intended for sash (window) mortices and similar. i.e a squarish mortice such as you might find in a window. They are made unrelieved for a functional reason - to ensure that the sides are square to the cut face.

Can I ask why you feel the need to try and constantly cut up another member. Is this common place on English forums or just lack of moderation?

 

[Jacob]

Can I ask why you feel the need to try and constantly cut up another member. Is this common place on English forums or just lack of moderation?

I don't. I do my utmost to ignore him. But I am regularly attacked by that member in thread after thread, often with a barrage of pages of vague and confused misinformation and contradiction, as we see here. He kicks off on post 21 and thereafter.
Occasionally feel I must respond.
There's a bit of discontinuity as usually I don't see his posts (on "ignore") so some of what look like replies are not at all.
A bit strange really - I put a bit of time and effort into a demo of a very ordinary morticing procedure. I don't mind, it was my livelihood, still is a bit, and a hobby.
The 1/2" mortice is just about the most common in the anglophone world and has been for a very long time, in doors, windows, furniture. I've done thousands of them, mostly by machine. I've also done them by hand, particularly before I had a machine, and otherwise as necessary. This meant using the heavy mortice chisel shown here and also various sash mortice chisels not shown.
The heavy 1/2" "OBM" in turn is about the most common, and the procedure I set out of how to use one is well known and ancient. The demo was also of a typical size such as found with variations all over the place, in doors , windows, some larger furniture such as tables. The next most common sizes were 5/8" and 3/8" for similar items larger or smaller.
They were designed and used for cutting mortices of their specific width, though occasionally they could be used for other purposes of course.
I've put him back on ignore and will leave it like that, but there are plenty of other details to expand upon if anybody wants to ask a question - about woodwork that is!
PS the small "sash" mortice chisel is rectangular in cross section because it was used typically for cutting small mortices for glazing bars and if not rectangular they would need to have the sides trimmed. It cuts both ways (literally) in a sense as you can't get the cutting edge into the centre due to size. Perhaps needs a drawing to explain - another time if there is one!

 

[Adam W.]

I think they work very well for their purpose, and that's probably the reason that they were produced in their hundreds of thousands over the course of a very long period, which says it all really.

They can also be used to chase a trench much like a plough plane, which is probably why the plough irons and mortice chisel are a similar shape.

History normally has the upper hand in these kind of discussions.

 

[planesleuth]

Speaks volumes to me. Anyone that uses the ignore button (and brags about it) has just a small part of the knowledge of others. I know who I would rather learn from.

 

[Jacob]

Occurred to me that disagreements about mortice chisels are due to some people simply not knowing how to use them?
An arrogant sweeping statement?
Well look here:- LN mortice chisel - handle issue
It's less surprising when you realise that even LN don't really know how to make them! Flimsy inadequate handles, further confirmed by the fact that they make them with parallel ground sides and miss another of the essential feature of the trad design which makes them so effective.
Low and behold a quick scan shows an LN rep doing a demo and, amazingly, really not knowing how to to use them, which in view of the above, should not be surprising!



Q.E.D. ?
I'm happy with that, I feel quite vindicated and lucky to have been shown how to use them all those years ago (1982 in fact).

PS Narex had a go and got the trapezoid shape right to some extent but have failed on the wide blade and long taper. They also have a small button on the end of the handle instead of the broad area of the trad. This would wreak havoc with the face of a mallet. Using a hammer would wreak havoc with the handle itself.
Give them a miss.
Narex Mortice Chisels - 8112 - a 2 minute mortice? Dolls house furniture perhaps.

 

[raffo]

The video demo is of a shallow mortise. David's point was that the pig sticker is optimized for deep mortises. You haven't refuted that point.

 

[D_W]

Occurred to me that disagreements about mortice chisels are due to some people simply not knowing how to use them?
An arrogant sweeping statement?
Well look here:- LN mortice chisel - handle issue
It's less surprising when you realise that even LN don't really know how to make them! Flimsy inadequate handles, further confirmed by the fact that they make them with parallel ground sides and miss another of the essential feature of the trad design which makes them so effective.
Low and behold a quick scan shows an LN rep doing a demo and, amazingly, really not knowing how to to use them, which in view of the above, should not be surprising!



Q.E.D. ?
I'm happy with that, I feel quite vindicated and lucky to have been shown how to use them all those years ago (1982 in fact).

Jacob, you have a lack of exposure and you "vindicate" yourself. LN copied a square sash mortise chisel. Sash mortises are too small for the squareness to matter that much, and there are plenty of older sash mortise chisels that have no taper. It seems like you have a blanket rule for mortises no matter what the tool designers intended 200-150 years ago, and you had someone teach you to mortise in 1982 and thus QED.

Very odd. From what was the golden age of hand tool use - second half of the 20th century.

Still failed to explain why they're ground with a rounded top and a small bevel at the tip and flat between. It's not hard to figure out.

The same as it's a whole lot more sensible to compare two chisels side by side in a given mortise to see where one is better than another. Outcomes, especially comparative and useful are too big of a burden for some folks. Many who say they do woodworking all the time don't have 10 minutes of spare time once a month to compare something that might save them 10 minutes a week for the rest of their lives.

 

[D_W]

Let me illustrate this nonsense about LN not knowing what they were making (I'm sure they looked at a bunch of vintage samples and picked aspects to copy). They're not just posting on forums.

It took me about 2 minutes to sift through chisels that I have but don't use much (the firmer in an exception - I use it to cut truss rod mortises in guitars).

left to right:
* I. Sorby firmer - no taper
* Woodcock sheffield mortise chisel (taller cross section) - no taper
* Champion socket mortise chisel (no clue on age, but would guess 1900 or early 1900s - it's cleanly finished unlike later more roughly finished chisels - tall cross section - square
* I. Sorby sash mortise chisel - no taper

All of these were made without taper because they're not designed for deep mortising. I have cut shallow mortises with all but the second chisel and there's nothing lacking. If you start trying to cut narrow deep mortises with them, what occurs isn't a surprise.

A more educated guess at this would be that there were tradesmen doing repetitive work who didn't want taper ground on mortise chisels for shallow mortises.

Not the internet look that all of the variations were specialty things each workman needed to have, but the more realistic expectation that a workman doing a lot of work where a non-tapered chisel was desirable would have non-tapered chisels and maybe none or only a couple of chisels for the odd deep mortise.

 

[D_W]

looking at the LN video, here's something for anyone who is going one way or another to ponder
* if you chop bevel down instead of straight down, the chisel chops wood up grain. Go to your shop and pare a piece of wood directly across the end grain and the pare diagonally to the top. See what you feel.
* when you ride a bevel down the mortise, while cutting, the chisel also moves laterally ( in a deep mortise, the chisel is also cutting laterally as well as moving down, cleaning the sides of the mortise. For this reason, you never want to ease the bottom edge of mortise chisels. Adam referred to plough plane blades (the sides are tapered in for the same reason as are decent rabbet and moving fillister irons).
* when you are riding bevel down and rotate to remove a chip, there is no smashing of fibers that occurs at the top of the mortise -when the chisel is parallel to the wood, the chip has already been long broken off and you can literally lift it out of the mortise if you want (it's laying on the back of the chisel).

You're left with two small triangles at the end of the mortise after you work across the mortise. To remove them, you lean the chisel back slightly (still bevel down) mallet a couple of strikes, rotate and do it again. You can remove sections of waste that are on the order of 3/8ths of an inch wide easily and cleanly and clean out the entire "triangle" in two quick passes).

Lie Nielsen's video with charlesworth shows a very prescriptive and relatively slow (but neat) method for mortises. David's objective is to teach something beginners will have success with, as is LN's (selling high angle frogs, etc, and telling people to avoid power grinders despite offering a steel that's got carbides that are a little slower to hand grind).

I can't think of a great reason to stand aside of a mortise but lean in to view down it vs. just standing behind it. if someone here reads older texts (I generally don't), I would bet you'll find pictures of people standing behind the stock instead of beside it.

 

[Jacob]

The video demo is of a shallow mortise. David's point was that the pig sticker is optimized for deep mortises. You haven't refuted that point.

There isn't a point to refute.
The pig sticker is a mortice chisel for mortices. Period. If long enough it'll do deep mortices but also do shallow mortices perfectly well.
The point of my demo above was to show a bog standard very ordinary mortice chisel doing a very ordinary and typical job.
Interestingly my longest mortice chisel is a sash mortice chisel and generally used for very shallow mortices, through glazing bars only 15mm thick etc. They are not designed for deep morticing particularly, but they are designed for small mortices as found with glazing bars. Nobody is likely to do a deep but small mortice in any case, unless for a special purpose, where a drilled hole might do just as well and easier.
The idea of "optimisation" is just over thinking. Though adding a rounded bevel is a useful "optimisation" for blind mortices if you were doing a lot.
PS come to think "deep"mortices are very rare on architectural and furniture woodwork. A 5" door stile max? The trade which would use them would be wheelwrights, carriage and wagon makers. They have their own tools for this - various drills, spoon bits etc for the hole, the "bruzz" chisel for the corners. Must have a look in Salaman, will report back!
PS an afterthought - in general "long" chisels such as the parer are not necessarily for making long cuts but are for precision and control. Particularly noticeable with pattern makers kit.

 

[D_W]

You're still dancing around the point jacob - of course you can do shallow mortises with a pigsticker. At some point, for narrow mortises, the thickness becomes impractical.

For shallow mortises, firmers or sash mortisers like I showed were used. Where does it actually make sense to seek out a pigsticker instead of one of those -when the mortise is deep enough for the chisel to work.

I would guess charlesworth's method comes from wearing or someone - this is not a matter of people doing production mortising (which is what I would assume the pigsticker was actually for - production type work, because the thickness allows rotation and working slightly more crude and much bigger chips than you can work with anything not so tall).

It's an issue of efficiency.

One that is probably lost , just like the cap iron was completely misinterpreted (and still is) by most people. The gain with the cap iron is first and foremost efficiency. The fact that almost nobody could describe how to set it practically illustrates that the efficiency wasn't needed.

Deep mortises would be doors and beds. The lock mortises are square enough that apparently even a pigsticker wasn't enough - backing the whole idea of using pigstickers into a narrow category where they're worth the cost - probably certain site and definitely certain production work. The type that nearly nobody does now. How many beds can someone make?

Riding the bevel isn't as intuitive. It's more efficient. It's perhaps not taught by most (as in, same reason it's not in wearing's book) because it's not as easy to master quickly.

I'll clean my bench off at some point and use a sash mortiser and a pigsticker and show the difference between the two in speed and chip size. Right now, it's covered with guitar stuff. It won't be that long or I"ll forget.

And it won't be for your benefit, it will be just about the same as everything else I've posted - for the benefit of someone coming anew to something (using the cap iron, making double iron planes, heat treating in open atmosphere). The pigsticker is used differently.

 

[Jacob]

The video demo is of a shallow mortise. David's point was that the pig sticker is optimized for deep mortises. You haven't refuted that point.

Had to revisit this it - odd details kept occurring to me.
1 Raffo is right, I hadn't noticed that it was a demo of a "shallow mortice". Not sure it makes any difference?
2 She spends half the vid explaining how to cope with the faulty and flimsy handle, which also is an issue with these chaps LN mortice chisel - handle issue
Very odd - the last thing you want on a mortice chisel is a little decorative handle which drops off! As far removed from the OBM's massive handle as you could possibly get!
3 But if she could actually get going with a mortice she would then hit the next problem (if the handle hasn't dropped off of course ) - that is the parallel ground sides of the chisel, completely disregarding one of the key features of mortice chisels everywhere - the trapezoid cross section. More than an inch in and she'd be struggling to pull the chisel out.
4 If she went any deeper she'd be struggling - because she is working with a badly designed fantasy mortice chisel completely unsuited for the job (and very expensive).

PS just noticed that the LN mortice chisel is promoted as "for cabinet maker rather than timber framer" which presumably means not for hitting hard. Useless in other words. Also accounts for the timidity of the demo vid.
A cabinet maker wants to do the job quickly and efficiently just as much as a timber framer.

 

[D_W]

Jacob - there's no need to keep making it up as you go along. I had some of these chisels at one point. The handle is hornbeam - you can hit them as hard as you want. Someone there seems to like the stanley style so the chisels are of that proportion (there were a whole bunch here sold like that, all the way up to parers which are about the same length as mine in total, just more metal, less handle.

I'm not sure where you come up with strange assertions like:

"for cabinet maker rather than timber framer" which presumably means not for hitting hard.

Just nonsense, Jacob. Barr and some other makers here still sell chisels for timberframing and at the time these were released, two cherries also sold huge mortise chisels that were giant in cross section with softer steel for timberframing work.

They're literally just telling you that they're not for deep mortises in housework - probably because they have received orders or questions and had to take chisels back for being smaller than the buyer expected.

The very thick cross section champion mortise chisel that I pictured above (much taller than it is wide) is the same pattern.

Post a *video* of you making a mortise neatly - so we can see the time and skill level. We'll critique. That'd be just dandy. I'm no pro and have no qualms about videoing planing or chiseling in real time.

You completely danced right around the fact that I showed two sheffield mortise chisels with square cross sections, too - way to go. I'm sure that woodcock and I. Sorby suffered for not having your consulting expertise.

 

[D_W]

For all of the people complaining about the price of LN's tools, I wonder how many people actually work for less per hour than the average LN plant worker or demonstrator gets.

The supposed very high price Jacob's talking about is $65.

 

[Lefley]

For all of the people complaining about the price of LN's tools, I wonder how many people actually work for less per hour than the average LN plant worker or demonstrator gets.

The supposed very high price Jacob's talking about is $65.

Are these any good for mortising?

 

[Jacob]

Are these any good for mortising?

It's fairly simple.
Basically they resemble the "sash" mortice chisel which means squarish in cross section as intended for small mortices, typically for glazing bars where the mortice can be approaching square in section.
It says they are "correctly trapezoidal" in section which actually is not "correct" for a sash mortice chisel as these are generally rectangular to square in section.
Which means less good for longer mortices compared to the wide blades of a trad OBM but could be slightly better than the rectangular trad "sash" mortice chisel.
They have another weakness in the handle, being relatively small, with what amounts to button at the top. I doubt this would survive the heavy battering a fully worked OBM mortice chisel would get with 2 or 3 times the cross sectional area to hit and fairly flat face to hit, ideal for a mallet. I guess they'd survive a lot better than the feeble LN socket handle.
However they could be pressed into use - I started out myself with a 1/2" sash mortice chisel and did hundreds before I bought a proper OBM, which was very much easier and faster in use. Then I got a machine.
The OBM is the essential "pick axe" of mortice work - designed/evolved to perfection for the job, like the pick axe. They've done a huge amount of work over the years, particularly the 1/2" which is the most common.
So Narex would do and a lot cheaper than LN, but a trad OBM would do a lot better than either.

 

[D_W]

I'm sure they're fine - cross section is a bit tall if you're making little mortises in face frames, etc, but they're a good design.

I've never had them but have had other narex chisels - the basic cost narex chisels are austempered ( a different hardening process than normal ) which limits how hard they can be made so you can expect they'll need a steeper angle (a little blunt) to hold up. They're about as hard as the current sorby offerings (the spec says 59, but they may fall a point or two short of that based on a set of parers that I had).

If it's important to describe the hardening process, I can, but the important take-aways is that they're not hardened like a typical tool in significant separate steps and the tail end of the hardening process that warps tools a lot, they don't use at the cost of not getting the same high hardness that a good set of old wards or I.H. Sorby chisels would have (and not as hard as stuff like iles or anything good quality now).

That's why they're inexpensive - the whole hardening process is completed at once and the warping is less because of it.

Whether or not you care about the hardness is dependent on your ability to accommodate them and what you're mortising.

(their Richter chisels are hardened with normal process and cryo treated at the end - which contrary to nonsense ad claims doesn't increase toughness of tools, it lowers the terminal temperature during the quench process and gives an extra point or two of hardness over normal process. Normal process is already higher potential hardness than austempering and it'd be easy to have a 6 point hardness variation between the two - austempering vs. normal + liquid nitrogen dip)

long story short, if you try one of the narex mortise chisels, try one first before buying a set.

 

[D_W]

It's fairly simple.
Basically they resemble the "sash" mortice chisel which means squarish in cross section as intended for small mortices, typically for glazing bars where the mortice can be approaching square in section.
It says they are "correctly trapezoidal" in section which actually is not "correct" for a sash mortice chisel as these are generally rectangular to square in section.
Which means less good for longer mortices compared to the wide blades of a trad OBM but could be slightly better than the rectangular trad "sash" mortice chisel.
They have another weakness in the handle, being relatively small, with what amounts to button at the top. I doubt this would survive the heavy battering a fully worked OBM mortice chisel would get with 2 or 3 times the cross sectional area to hit and fairly flat face to hit, ideal for a mallet. I guess they'd survive a lot better than the feeble LN socket handle.
However they could be pressed into use - I started out myself with a 1/2" sash mortice chisel and did hundreds before I bought a proper OBM, which was very much easier and faster in use. Then I got a machine.
The OBM is the essential "pick axe" of mortice work - designed/evolved to perfection for the job, like the pick axe. They've done a huge amount of work over the years, particularly the 1/2" which is the most common.
So Narex would do and a lot cheaper than LN, but a trad OBM would do a lot better than either.

Good God. I hope nobody who is doing bench work follows the suggestion that OBM are just standard all around mortising chisels.

The narex pattern (Sash with trapezoid) are the do-all pattern at the bench for anyone doing cabinet work up to the occasional bed).

All of this fragile handle talk is insane, as if you do cabinet mortises with a lump hammer - it's very odd.

 

[Jacob]

Had a quick flip through the literature to see what is said about hand morticing but not a lot there on such a basic topic except this picture in Corkhill & Lowsley

It shows a blind mortice with vertical chisel cuts as I describe above. Starting in the middle working to one end face forwards, start again in the middle and work to the other end, scoop out chippings (no "levering", they are already loose). Exactly what you'd expect. Not much text.
I tend to start in the middle the same, but then turn and work back to the other end. Don't need to remove chippings from a though mortice you just hack on through them and when it's finished they fall out, or get pushed though. It's quicker as you don't have to change your action.

The problem for the new boys is that they have to reinvent these things and often get them wrong. Just think of sharpening - entirely reinvented by maniacs, gadget designers and salesmen!

Will post on another item - I thought I'd have a go side by side cutting 3 mortices with same size chisels, but one OBM, one sash and one firmer.