Regular Mortice Chisel or Bevel Edged for your Mortices

[woodbrains]

Quite so, CC. There are so many different types/scales of woodworking that many threads can have two people, each thinking of their own example, arguing at cross purposes, when each is right, within their own context.

None of them are right, though, unless they're using Mr Ford's methods!!
If only someone had uploaded some VHS of his 1982 methods to YouTube...

Hello,

Betamax! VHS is only used by amateurs. :lol:

Mike.

 

[Tasky]

Hello,
Betamax! VHS is only used by amateurs. :lol:
Mike.

Hello.

Actually any professional will almost certainly be on a (potentially stunning, but still limited) budget and as a whole product, VHS wins on all counts. This is why all our asset CCTV surveys from the 80s and 90s were on VHS. Any notion of Betamax being technically superior, either as a cor or whole product, is merely a combination of received wisdom and urban myth, possibly perpetuated by Sony themselves to cover up their hideously bad marketing decisions...

Tasky.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I suspect VHS was no different then than Windows is now. It was ubiquitous because it hit the market at the right time, not because it was better than anything else.

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Actually, I would think Mr. Ford would use nothing else but Super 8.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

Quite so, CC. There are so many different types/scales of woodworking that many threads can have two people, each thinking of their own example, arguing at cross purposes, when each is right, within their own context.

None of them are right, though, unless they're using Mr Ford's methods!!
If only someone had uploaded some VHS of his 1982 methods to YouTube...

Mr Ford was a retired joiner in 1982 which would have made him 60 ish. He almost certainly would have trained before and around 1940 when the great tradition of woodwork was still going strong.
Joni Mitchell was wrong about "you don't know what you've got til it's gone" as a vast amount of stuff is simply forgotten forever.
Jeer as much as you like - but in fact his method is very effective and was probably absolutely standard and was taught via C&G courses, which were derived from trade practices - not from would-be amateur woodwork gurus in sheds with video cameras!

PS I've just remembered: although he knew his woodwork we in fact thought he was a bit of an R sole. But nobody is perfect!

 

[Jacob]

NB to save confusion and to be more logically consistent: flat side = face, bevel side = back.

Your proposed naming is logical, but not traditional. Things are what they are......r

Actually is traditional as well as logical. But you get both usages.
Calling the face the back seem to be important to modern sharpeners - a sort of masonic code word?

 

[D_W]

NB to save confusion and to be more logically consistent: flat side = face, bevel side = back.

Your proposed naming is logical, but not traditional. Things are what they are.

If you ever go sailing, are you going to get "sheets" and "painters" renamed too? :roll:

BugBear

I thought it was backwards, too, but I make up words on the fly, so who am I to criticize?

Apologies for the comments about waste side and work side, etc, I just have never seen a great way to talk about "which way do you do it?" with mortises. Every discussion is confusion, almost as if you have to draw pictures, and then if you draw a picture of what someone literally wrote, often times, they mean the opposite.

I like the term "ride the bevel"...do you "ride the bevel", but there's a large segment of folks who don't know what that means, either.

Plus, whatever you prefer, it will be wrong. There's a weird al song for that. It could be used for sharpening threads, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KThlYHfIVa8

 

[MikeG.]

I wonder whether there's a danger of talking at cross purposes, here. Cabinetmaking and timber framing are significantly different activities, with valid techniques and methods of work applicable to either, but (except very loosely) not both. It's rather like comparing clockmaking with heavy engineering.

The methods of sinking a mortice several inches long and deep and perhaps an inch or more in width in green oak may not be quite the same as those for furniture work in dry wood.

That is in no way a criticism of any comment or participant so far in the thread. It's just an observation, that's all.

Indeed, but all I did in turning my hand to oak framing was scale up from the furniture making work I had been doing with seasoned wood for 30 or 35 years. There is no fundamental difference*, only a difference of scale.

*Other than the previously noted lack of a reference face and edge.

 

[custard]

Indeed, but all I did in turning my hand to oak framing was scale up from the furniture making work I had been doing with seasoned wood for 30 or 35 years. There is no fundamental difference*, only a difference of scale.

That's not been my experience. I've always found that the difference between kilned timber and green timber is like chalk and cheese. I can force a chisel fairly deeply into wet Oak without using a mallet, I couldn't get anywhere close with kilned Oak.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Calling the face the back seem to be important to modern sharpeners - a sort of masonic code word?

Modern? the flat side was the back when I was at school 50 years ago - I never heard anyone call it the face til I read it here.

 

[Jacob]

Calling the face the back seem to be important to modern sharpeners - a sort of masonic code word?

Modern? the flat side was the back when I was at school 50 years ago - I never heard anyone call it the face til I read it here.

There you go then!
The flat side was the face when I was at school 62 years ago - I never heard anyone call it the back til I read it here.
What would you call the other side then - the back of the back, or the top or something?

 

[MikeG.]

Someone wasn't paying attention at school, or is mis-remembering.

 

[MikeG.]

Indeed, but all I did in turning my hand to oak framing was scale up from the furniture making work I had been doing with seasoned wood for 30 or 35 years. There is no fundamental difference*, only a difference of scale.

That's not been my experience. I've always found that the difference between kilned timber and green timber is like chalk and cheese. I can force a chisel fairly deeply into wet Oak without using a mallet, I couldn't get anywhere close with kilned Oak.

That's only a difference in scale, Jacob. It doesn't really change fundamentally how you approach joints. It just means you don't get so tired, and your chisel stays sharp much longer.

 

[custard]

Indeed, but all I did in turning my hand to oak framing was scale up from the furniture making work I had been doing with seasoned wood for 30 or 35 years. There is no fundamental difference*, only a difference of scale.

That's not been my experience. I've always found that the difference between kilned timber and green timber is like chalk and cheese. I can force a chisel fairly deeply into wet Oak without using a mallet, I couldn't get anywhere close with kilned Oak.

That's only a difference in scale, Jacob. It doesn't really change fundamentally how you approach joints. It just means you don't get so tired, and your chisel stays sharp much longer.

I'll put up with a lot, but being called Jacob is just going too far!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Someone wasn't paying attention at school, or is mis-remembering.

Unless you were at the same school, you wouldn't know, would you?

 

[NickN]

Of course, we could also have a back face... :lol:

 

[Tasky]

I suspect VHS was no different then than Windows is now. It was ubiquitous because it hit the market at the right time, not because it was better than anything else.

It was ubiquitous because Sony decided to make Betamax tapes small and thus shorter, even though it held almost 100% of the market to begin with. VHS, however, could be left to record a full length film - Duration was more important to people, which is why they usually opted for Long Play mode and forewent the higher quality picture option in favour of recording more programmes on the one cassette.
TechSpecs-wise, there wasn't much perceptible difference, if any.

Mr Ford was a retired joiner in 1982 which would have made him 60 ish. He almost certainly would have trained before and around 1940 when the great tradition of woodwork was still going strong.

So the old ways are the only ways and there's only ever one way to skin a cat, yes?

Jeer as much as you like - but in fact his method is very effective and was probably absolutely standard and was taught via C&G courses, which were derived from trade practices - not from would-be amateur woodwork gurus in sheds with video cameras!

And woodworking gurus in sheds (as well as being paid instructors, and actual workers who make stuff for money) were many years in the trade themselves, starting as apprentices taught by those with many years in the trade as well... doesn't mean one is better than the other, does it?

Or should I now be chopping every motice on my fine, delicate woodwork witha hoofing great mortise chisel a-la the Mister Ford method?
If he's still alive, I may go see what the Mr Crozier method was, just for giggles...!

Modern? the flat side was the back when I was at school 50 years ago - I never heard anyone call it the face til I read it here.

Simple way around it - Flat side and bevel side.
Have the flat side vertical and facing the 'knife wall as you work away from it, riding the bevel down as you chisel out.

 

[ED65]

Actually is traditional as well as logical.

No Jacob, it's not traditional. I'm fairly confident I've read more period woodworking books than you — including many from before even you went to school — and I can assure you that the back of the blade was nearly universally the flat side, as typified by the sentence "flip the iron FLAT on its back and draw it lightly over the stone to remove the burr".

As for being logical, obviously a case can be made for it being sensible for plane irons to call the upper surface when in the plane the face. I don't think it makes any sense with chisels where that side would face downwards a lot of the time. But this is neither here nor there.

 

[custard]

I'm fairly confident I've read more period woodworking books than you

This forum is getting madder, it's turning into a woodworking version of Royston Vasey.

 

[MarkDennehy]

After spending the bulk of today prepping stock by hand, I'll take the laughs
BTW, in case you're interested, frame saw vs scrub plane isn't even a contest if you're thicknessing poplar down by a quarter inch.

Why the hell hasn't any shed guru put that in a woodworking video, that's what I want to know...


(I will say though that they're right about frame saws - compared to resawing with a ryoba or a western handsaw it's a lot easier).