Mortice chisels

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

To my eye, the bench chisel in the Sellers video did a better job. It was faster too.

The problem with both the demonstrations was that they were aided by the glass wall. This in particular aids the bevel edged chisel (Sellers), as it offers support to maintain accuracy.

It would have been better if both parties chopped their mortices unaided by the glass wall.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

Not really a problem since both were using the glass, same species of lumber, etc. Sellers arranged his demo to match Follansbee's. That was the point. If the glass "helped" one chisel it helped the other. Don't tear something vital this morning with such a huge stretch.

 

[Trafalgar]

In all three videos the best demo is the Sellers with the bevel edge. It's a concise demo that creates a mortise quickly.
Regard the OBM/Pig Stick I'm sure the best ones I have are tapered in their width too. For instance the 12mm is that width at the edge and more like 10mm at the bolster.

Anything to keep them from looking like a hundred dolla' railroad spike with a pretty handle. :lol:

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Not really a problem since both were using the glass, same species of lumber, etc. Sellers arranged his demo to match Follansbee's. That was the point. If the glass "helped" one chisel it helped the other. Don't tear something vital this morning with such a huge stretch.

The point I was making, Charles, was that the glass aided in guiding the BE chisels a whole lot more than the OBM chisels. Good OBM chisels guide themselves by virtue of their design. That is why they developed as they did over a couple of hundred years.

So, in actual fact, the videos were not equivalent. For someone with Sellers' skill it may not have mattered, and very likely was not a factor that even occurred to him as a result. However, the point of a OBM is that it does not need steering, in fact cannot be steered. This reduces user-error.

I am not arguing that BE chisels cannot be used, or even that they cannot be used efficiently. I am simply stating that, given the choice of a decent BE chisel or a decent OBM chisel, I would go for the latter every time. In fact I do.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[PAC1]

Derek Does you preference for the OBM apply regardless of size of mortice? For instance cutting mortices by hand: 5/16ths and down I use a mortice chisel. 3/8ths and up I would drill out the waste and then pair down using a BE Chisel.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Hi PAC

I use OBM chisels most commonly in 1/4" and 5/16" sizes. Most frames I use are around the 3/4" mark. Occasionally I use a 1/8" and a 3/8". I have a 1/2" chisel, but cannot recall when I last used it. I'd rather do a double 1/4" mortice-and-tenon joint. Wide mortices in hardwood call for other methods. They are really hard work. Frankly, that is the time to use a power router! I do.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[swagman]

And you have the cheek to point the finger at me for using a honing guide Derek.. =D>

 

[PAC1]

Thanks Derek, In practice I do not cut many mortices by hand, a well set up Hollow Morticer is used. The Router is also a good alternative.
Certainly 3/8ths and above are usually machine cut.
My point is the OP mentioned half inch mortices which as I say if cutting by hand I would drill out. I did not want the OP thinking we all cut large Mortices by hand using a Mortice Chisel.

 

[Trafalgar]

Not really a problem since both were using the glass, same species of lumber, etc. Sellers arranged his demo to match Follansbee's. That was the point. If the glass "helped" one chisel it helped the other. Don't tear something vital this morning with such a huge stretch.

The point I was making, Charles, was that the glass aided in guiding the BE chisels a whole lot more than the OBM chisels. Good OBM chisels guide themselves by virtue of their design. That is why they developed as they did over a couple of hundred years.

So, in actual fact, the videos were not equivalent. For someone with Sellers' skill it may not have mattered, and very likely was not a factor that even occurred to him as a result. However, the point of a OBM is that it does not need steering, in fact cannot be steered. This reduces user-error.

I am not arguing that BE chisels cannot be used, or even that they cannot be used efficiently. I am simply stating that, given the choice of a decent BE chisel or a decent OBM chisel, I would go for the latter every time. In fact I do.

Regards from Perth

Derek

You simply have no way of knowing how the glass affected the test. It's your biased opinion, at best. In a regular furniture sized mortise there's not enough of the bleedin' pigsticker in the hole to even matter. That's why the things look so patently absurd, for instance, when chopping a two inch long mortise in a cabinet door frame to a depth of three quarters or so. By the time you get to a depth where it might (and I stress "might") matter, an inch or so, you're done. Hence the results you saw on the video. Tap, tap, tap, whoa, I'm already to depth... rinse and repeat. With tools you already have.

It does not take a professional craftsman with 50 years' experience to control a bevel edged chisel being powered with a mallet. If it does, we're all screwed way beyond just making mortises.

 

[G S Haydon]

So, in actual fact, the videos were not equivalent. For someone with Sellers' skill it may not have mattered, and very likely was not a factor that even occurred to him as a result. However, the point of a OBM is that it does not need steering, in fact cannot be steered. This reduces user-error.

Not sure I agree Derek, something that cannot be "steered" sound like a benefit of a machine based approach, something that has become very normal in today's word when using hand tools. It is the very fact that things can be "steered" which makes hand tool work freeing and versatile.

Here's and OBM (wish we could just call it a moritise chisel)

Kee's had some pictures of Dutch example with this feature too. They cut clean, don't bind (because they can't unless you're a half wit) and can be "steered".

Sorry if it sounds blunt (much like the edge of my mortise chisel) . Think I might dust off my video camera

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Graham, no steering = no twisting, especially in wild grain. Just my experience since much of the wood I use is wild grain.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[G S Haydon]

Derek, no steering = no freedom and binding mortice. Looks like I'll need to find a clean piece of wood and a railway sleeper (primary use for Jarrah http://www.railwaysleepers.com/railway- ... y-sleepers) . Having said that you make those sleepers look stunning in you furniture

 

[Trafalgar]

According to Frank Klausz it is the trapezoidal shape of a mortise chisel, when viewed head-on, that lends it its "steerability." So to the extent that any chisel has this shape, "pigsticker" or not, then it is steerable to some degree and one can also therefore have it go off-course.

For a chisel to be truly self-jigging and silly person proof it would need to be a perfect rectangle if not a perfect square and be honed exactly square to its sides. The AI pigstickers are neither.

I have some old Marples sash mortisers that are rectangular as far as I can tell. Ian Kirby also advocates for a rectangular rather than trapezoidal shaped chisel, for what it's worth. He can be seen in photos using Marples Blue Chip sash mortising chisels. I've never had hands on one. I assume they're the same shape as my boxwood handled Marples.

If you hone a rectangular mortise chisel a little off-square it will go off-course in the mortise. I can certainly attest to this. Something to keep in mind, though I don't use mine that much anymore.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Either we are conversing at cross-purposes, or we work differently. The only time I "steer" a mortice chisel is when placing it in position at the surface. The chisel is aligned square to the mortice lines, and then struck straight down. I do not seek to steer it on its journey straight down, nor does it need to be steered.

The only chopping direction is straight down. I learned that this is the method advocated by Maynard. No attempt is made to lever out waste. The waste is being forced into the (drilled) hole on the right (obscured in the photo).

By the three-quarter point it is likely that you will be at full depth.

Continue to the end of the mortice …

… and then turn the chisel around and return.

About half way you can lever out the chips.

Continue to the end of the mortice and clean up.

There is no steering anywhere here.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

I cut mine with a central v and never have that row of jammed chips as in your photos. I hate that look and they often bruise the margins, especially with the chisel you're using. Not a big deal on a four-shouldered tenon but not all can be four-shouldered all the time.

To my eye, it's like using a 36" bar Husqvarna chainsaw to trim the holly bushes -- a little over-the-top. When a really big mortise is called for they aren't made in a size to accommodate. I just don't see the advantage unfortunately, certainly not in the 1/4" and 5/16" sizes.

Whether or not 'steerability' is an issue of importance in any particular person's work doesn't change the fact that a trapezoidal chisel is steerable and can go off course. The AIs are trapezoidal.

 

[G S Haydon]

Neat work but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Moving with the bevel in the direction the chisel creates a slicing action rather than the blunt chopping against the end grain, makes for easier work and less stress on the edge so less need for miracle steels. Sellers demonstrates it well in the video, but it's no his method exlusively. It shows up in the "Practical Woodworker - Bernard E Jones". If we're calling one way the "Maynard" :lol: I'll conced to calling the other way the "Sellers".

Having a chisel with tapered edges such as a bevel edge reduces resistance, or a mortice chisel like I've shown, tapered in it's length removes pretty much any resistance. Sash mortice chisels are ok but in my limited experience a stout bevel edge, like a marples, is better on lighter work.

And let's be honest, mortising by hand is pretty much like the Dodo. HCM and similar have been around so long (150 years) no serious professional has been mortising by hand unless their client base is niece or they've been learning a skill during their apprenticeship.

It's then left to the fools (of which I am one) to experiment in lieu of actual hand tool woodworkers who have long since perished.

 

[D_W]

I cut mine with a central v and never have that row of jammed chips as in your photos. I hate that look and they often bruise the margins, especially with the chisel you're using. Not a big deal on a four-shouldered tenon but not all can be four-shouldered all the time.

To my eye, it's like using a 36" bar Husqvarna chainsaw to trim the holly bushes.

Whether or not 'steerability' is an issue in any particular person's work doesn't change the fact that a trapezoidal chisel is steerable and can go off course. The AIs are trapezoidal I believe.

It's pretty easy to leave the starting end short a eighth of an inch and avoid the bruising if there's no shoulder on the tenon at the end of the mortise.

I just watched sellers' video again, i guess it's worth doing once a year or so to notice that it's clear that he's comfortable with the bench chisel, but he has no clue how to progress in the mortise with the mortise chisel, he leaves strange areas of waste with it, and he literally hammers the bench chisel much faster. He also takes really inconsistent thickness chips with the mortise chisel, but not with the bench chisel. Why is that?

I don't have to work to cut mortises just as fast as he did with his bench chisels with the oval bolstered chisels I've had. Minus just a little bit of speed that he'd be minus, too, if his mortise was bound by wood on both sides (cutting the mortise of a plane is about twice as fast in the cuts where the wood is held only on one side - I doubt that's any different).

I did a couple of face frames last year with bench chisels, and didn't find them faster than anything other than the japanese mortise chisel I have...or had until it broke. That one had a problem of binding in a mortise, which makes it fairly difficult to cut a fast mortise. I gave it a fair shake to figure out if it was me or the chisel - until it broke after only about, maybe 100 mortises.

(I wonder why sellers wouldn't use a larger mallet with the larger chisel - I'd imagine if he used both tools an equal amount of times, he'd cut a mortise at the same speed)

By the way, notice how much more slowly the mortise progresses here without the holding wood removed from one side (maybe a bad term to use, I'm not talking about felling trees).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBodzmUGtdw

 

[Trafalgar]

If Seller's effort with the pigsticker was bad I'm not sure what to say about Follansbee's. Didn't look good at all to me.

Sellers does seem more comfortable with the B/E chisel but that's the point, right, to show how well it can work. The fact that he actually used the method during a career in woodworking isn't an indictment of some sort I assume.

Central V is the way to go. Sellers demonstrates something sort of similar, but does them a different way in another video. It works - you never have that row of kibble when starting the job.

There are other Sellers videos on YouTube showing him chopping out with a B/E chisel. It's fast but he does pause to instruct.

 

[D_W]

If Seller's effort with the pigsticker was bad I'm not sure what to say about Follansbee's. Didn't look good at all to me.

Sellers does seem more comfortable with the B/E chisel but that's the point, right, to show how well it can work. The fact that he actually used the method during a career in woodworking isn't an indictment of some sort I assume.

Central V is the way to go. Sellers demonstrates something sort of similar. It works.

Not an indictment on the method with the chisel, just a suggestion that he's not very good using the bigger chisel because he's not familiar with it. Also interesting that it's sharpened like some chisels were in the 18th century, but not the 20th.

Take a look at the edge of these mortise chisels. They have a long very defined microbevel. It's the only part of the chisel in the wood until you lever them (assuming you cut a mortise with the bevel facing the wood yet to be cut - I don't know why anyone would do it differently as the chisel doesn't clear the waste out of the mortise, but that's a debate that's been had before). Look at the taper on the ends of those chisels. Little of them touches wood. Paul's chisel is set up a little different, and I don't know about the taper on his but the taper doesn't matter since the wood is holding only on one side.

Can't speak to follansbee, he's an interesting guy, but he doesn't make things that I'd like to make or work to a level of neatness that I'd like to have, so I don't watch much of what he does. The demonstrations with pit saws, etc, are interesting.

Anyway, if chisels are proper for each type, I would guess that the speed in making mortise (and the results) would be about the same for everything. If someone likes to use bench chisels, that's fine, I just don't get the sense that a guy using a chisel that he's used to "teach 3000 students" or whatever it was, and then picking up another one and don't a half-baked job with it is a definitive comparison. It *would've* been an indictment of it if paul somehow managed to use a chisel he's not familiar with to a much greater effect than one he is.

 

[Trafalgar]

Again my focus would be on Follansbee who does use pigstickers and is generally thought to be something of an expert on old tools and methods of work, along with the styles and genres in which he works.

The comparison, if I may, is not between Seller's use of each chisel but Seller's use of a bench chisel vs. Follansbee's use of a pigsticker. I don't see how anybody could come away with any other impression than Sellers is better at mortising with his B/E chisel than Follansbee is with his pigsticker. If Follansbee can be accepted as an expert user of that style mortising chisel and Sellers his, then... ??? Could it be the chisels?