Re-handling ward mortice chisels?

[jimi43]

......... One of those twybill looks really useful tho. If i have many more to do it might be worth the investment :/
Matt

If you can find one it might set you back quite a bit for an original one....you could always get a blacksmith to make you one though! :wink:

Jim

 

[Jacob]

......... One of those twybill looks really useful tho. If i have many more to do it might be worth the investment :/
Matt

If you can find one it might set you back quite a bit for an original one....you could always get a blacksmith to make you one though! :wink:

Jim

£66 here http://www.woodsmithstore.co.uk/shop/Pr ... es+Twybil/
A lot of interesting techniques and tools are being rediscovered - mainly by the bodgers and green woodworking lot.

 

[jimi43]

......... One of those twybill looks really useful tho. If i have many more to do it might be worth the investment :/
Matt

If you can find one it might set you back quite a bit for an original one....you could always get a blacksmith to make you one though! :wink:

Jim

£66 here http://www.woodsmithstore.co.uk/shop/Pr ... es+Twybil/
A lot of interesting techniques and tools are being rediscovered - mainly by the bodgers and green woodworking lot.

Oh no.....I don't want one...really I don't....

I shall wait until one comes up at a bootfair....... :mrgreen:

(actually...every single time I say that I find the thing!....)

Maybe not! :wink:

Jim

 

[kirkpoore1]

....
Watching the video....(thanks Pete)....the angled slicing across the grain is shown and the small progression across the cavity is also shown...listen to the taps...no hefty bashes there and certainly nothing to cause the handle to split.
....
Jim

I wasn't at all impressed by the videos. No "technique" at all and quite wrong IMHO. Some deceptively soft wood!
You do have to bash them hard, you don't have to lever (except near the end with a bilnd mortice), you don't do angle cuts - chisel should be vertical with every stroke.
PS and no you don't need to drill out first. It can make the work more difficult as the chisel tends to go off line. Though when you go above a bout 5/8" it gets to be hard work and a bit of pre drilling could be excused!

Jacob, I don't know what you're complaining about. First, yes, you do have to hit hard--in hard wood. In soft wood, you don't have to hit that hard. Second, you can make mortises in any kind of wood--I've chopped them in pine, white oak, and lots of stuff in between. Third, there was little levering in those videos except to clear the chips out, and frankly I don't know how else to do it except to get down there and blow them out--which rarely works well in my experience. Sure, vertical chops get the work done, and they get 90% of my cuts, but angled cuts and levering are sometimes necessary.

I agree that drilling is rarely necessary, and unless you're using a drill press it can be counter-productive because a hand drill can tilt. And multiple holes in a row can get off-line, leading to a wider mortise. I like hand chopping instead of trying to clean up drilled holes. But if you've got lots of mortises, or large ones, drilling out is faster.

I'd like to see a twybill in action. I suspect that if your grain isn't quite parallel to your mortise, it may give you trouble, but again for big holes it would probably be pretty handy.

Kirk

 

[Jacob]

.........
Jacob, I don't know what you're complaining about. ...........
Kirk

Basically it's the feeble and unsystematic way he pokes at it, and the unsatisfactory end product.
He starts with a badly shaped chisel (flat bevel), he doesn't know the trad method (chisel vertical, face forwards each cut, very systematic), he levers unnecessarily and dents the edges of the hole in the process, the sides of his hole aren't perpendicular (in spite of vaguely waving a square around at one point). All in all a very amateurish effort. No doubt he gets mortices made, but slowly, untidily and inefficiently.
There's a post here http://www.woodworkuk.co.uk/forum/viewt ... f=5&t=3691

 

[Racers]

And I supose you can do dovetails faster as well :wink:

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/video/klausz

Pete

 

[Jacob]

And I supose you can do dovetails faster as well :wink:

http://www.popularwoodworking.com/video/klausz

Pete

Not me squire.
The odd thing is the circus are good at fast freehand dovetails - I'm impressed by their high speed demos. Also they are interesting - that is how they were done when a lot of stuff was hand made IMHO, non of the fiddling about with precise spacing/angles, funny japanese saws, sets of special chisels etc.
Mind you - Kausz's DTs are a bit ropey in that video. 5/10?
So why don't they get their act together with mortices? They used to whack them out at high speed too, in the old days.
I just happen to know this because I was taught how to do it. My first efforts I did sitting down at the bench and scraping away at an angle just like Klausz. I got thoroughly corrected, with a good deal of sarcasm thrown in!

 

[Corneel]

Interesting Jacob. I read that thread on the other forum from your link. I have a table coming up next on my to do list, so I am eager to learn an efficient morticing method. In the past I always drilled and paired.

Two questions. When and how do you remove the waste on a mortice that doesn't go all the way through?
Where does the curved bevel com into play? What does it do?

 

[Jacob]

...
Two questions. When and how do you remove the waste on a mortice that doesn't go all the way through?
Where does the curved bevel com into play? What does it do?

You have to lever out waste from a blind mortice obviously, but you leave it to near the end. The curved bevel come in when you are cleaning out the corners - you poke the edge in to the corner with the bevel against the end, i.e. with the chisel at an angle. Then lever with the bevel against the end but avoiding pivoting on the edge of the hole and denting it.
It's obvious when you get around to it.

 

[Corneel]

Thanks. I'll give it a try. The drilling method is too tedious.

 

[Jacob]

Thanks. I'll give it a try. The drilling method is too tedious.

Morticing by hand you emulate the action of the hand powered mortice machine - chisel straight up and down. There's one here:
http://findgoodtools.com/toppicks/chisels.htm
Drilling would be easier with a pillar drill, otherwise best avoided IMHO.

 

[marcros]

does anybody on the forum use a hand morticing machine?

 

[condeesteso]

Mark - a chisel you mean? Yes, I do. What can I help you with?

sorry... (hammer)

 

[marcros]

Mark - a chisel you mean? Yes, I do. What can I help you with?

sorry... (hammer)

what is the single and universally accepted best way of sharpening it? :evil:

 

[condeesteso]

smart response Mark... provocative, but smart.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Mark - a chisel you mean? Yes, I do. What can I help you with?

sorry... (hammer)

what is the single and universally accepted best way of sharpening it? :evil:

One thing I think we can all agree on is that the cutting edge should be at the opposite end of the blade to the handle. After that, it's every man for himself....


On morticing, the way I was taught is to chop the mortice to full depth, clearing waste when it seems necessary, but leaving about 1/8" (or a bit more in softer woods) at each end of the mortice untouched. That means that as you lever out the waste, the inevitable damage to the mortice end does not extend beyond the marked end of the finished hole. The last job when the mortice is to finised depth is to chop out, usually in two or three steps, each end piece. The last cut therefore takes out only a shaving, but leaves the mortice end square (both across the stock, and in depth) and clean. These last 'clean-up' cuts only take seconds.

 

[Jacob]

Hand morticing machine here. They look like a good idea, I wonder if any are still in use.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I've never seen a hand morticer (except in pictures and on Ebay), but recall reading about them somewhere - an old-timer who served his time in a shop possessing one. He reckoned it was mighty hard work on anything other than small chisels in softwood. You have to swing mighty hard on the handle to push a bigger chisel into harder woods - I suppose even more so if you're a smallish apprentice.

I'm speculating now, but suspect they may be OK for shortish production runs, but not the sort of thing you'd want to do all morning. After all, doing the job on the bench with chisel and mallet, impact does the work. With the hand morticer, it's more about applying pressure.

 

[marcros]

how do they work- leverage from the handle replacing the mallet blows? In which case, I presume that you dont do a full depth mortice in each position, but instead work similarly to the way it is done by hand- in layers until you reach approx half way through.

I am tempted to have a look and get one on ebay just to see if they are any good!

 

[kirkpoore1]

Also known as a solid chisel mortiser, to differentiate between that and hollow chisel and chain mortisers. In the US, these were usually driven by a foot pedal instead of a hand lever. The lineshaft driven versions were said to create such a hammering that they would eventually destroy themselves. In the more advanced power versions, they included a drill setup to make a line of holes, then the solid chisel would square the ends and clean up the sides. I've seen a few in person, but never seen one under power in person.

Kirk