Regular Mortice Chisel or Bevel Edged for your Mortices

[woodbrains]

I guess this is how it would have been done in the good old days as it's easier and quicker, but I've never seen any evidence such as accidental over-cuts.
The trouble with waste is that it's never left lying around as evidence!

Hello,

This is precisely why those experts who have been doing it for decades, write books so we all know what gets done. It saves guessing, speculation and just making stuff up, which seems to be your predilection. Of course not having all the clues doesn't seem to bother you ; it has the advantage of never revealing speculated nonsense along with any overcuts in the waste.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

I guess this is how it would have been done in the good old days as it's easier and quicker, but I've never seen any evidence such as accidental over-cuts.
The trouble with waste is that it's never left lying around as evidence!

Hello,

This is precisely why those experts who have been doing it for decades, write books so we all know what gets done. It saves guessing, speculation and just making stuff up, which seems to be your predilection. Of course not having all the clues doesn't seem to bother you ; it has the advantage of never revealing speculated nonsense along with any overcuts in the waste.

Mike.

In the old days they wouldn't have had the latest books by the latest trendy guru. In fact they mostly wouldn't have been able to read!
But they would have got good at doing things efficiently and they wouldn't have fiddled about amateurishly with fret saws.
For wider (2 kerf) pinholes you can make the first cut of the 3 on the angle. This means one piece of the waste is a parallelogram and pops out easily. The other triangular piece pops out easily into the hole left.
I'm sure I'm not the only person to have found an easier way to do DTs than using a coping or fret saw! The trouble with the books is that once something gets written up, if it's half credible it becomes gospel e.g. the 1/6 or 1/8 gradients for DTs - unknown in the past but slavishly obeyed by the modern amateur.

 

[MarkDennehy]

they wouldn't have fiddled about amateurishly with fret saws

See, if you'd just make a few videos, less amateurs would be doing that. The saw cut down the middle of the pinhole is faster, simpler and cheaper 'cos you just need to buy one saw, they'd do that instead.
But since they've never heard of that method (and I don't see it in Hayward btw, I've just checked my copy of The Hayward Years and there's not a single mention of it - it's always chisels or a bow saw or a coping saw)...

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

There is nothing amateurish about removing the waste with a fretsaw, or similar. For one, Robert Ingham does it; if anyone contends that he is amateurish, probably the most prolific teacher of the finest furniture craftsmen in this country, then that person would be a fool.

Incidentally, Krenov used the 3 cut method of sawing dovetails, as do I. There are many ways to skin a cat. If none of it were written in books, his would we find out. This sort of detail is impossible to find out by examining existing work.

Mike.

 

[AndyT]

Jacob, you're not the only one to have thought about how to remove the waste from a skinny dovetail socket.
Joel Moskowitz is a thoughtful woodworker, interested in the history of hand tool woodworking and keen to rediscover efficient ways of working.

Here's a blog post, from July this year, in which he thinks about how things could have been done before coping saws and fretsaws were common, and comes up with the same sensible idea, which - he notes - he has not seen described in any book.

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... ng%20Waste

 

[Jacob]

Hello,

There is nothing amateurish about removing the waste with a fretsaw, or similar.

Fiddly slow and inconvenient

For one, Robert Ingham does it; if anyone contends that he is amateurish, probably the most prolific teacher of the finest furniture craftsmen in this country, then that person would be a fool.

He does it because he knows no better. I don't have this cringing admiration for these gurus

Incidentally, Krenov used the 3 cut method of sawing dovetails, as do I. There are many ways to skin a cat. If none of it were written in books, his would we find out. This sort of detail is impossible to find out by examining existing work.

Mike.

I see you have got the idea Mike! Well done! Where does Krenov say this - he's not noted for efficiency as a rule?

 

[Jacob]

Jacob, you're not the only one to have thought about how to remove the waste from a skinny dovetail socket.
Joel Moskowitz is a thoughtful woodworker, interested in the history of hand tool woodworking and keen to rediscover efficient ways of working.

Here's a blog post, from July this year, in which he thinks about how things could have been done before coping saws and fretsaws were common, and comes up with the same sensible idea, which - he notes - he has not seen described in any book.

https://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/sto ... ng%20Waste

It's fairly obvious - millions must do it the same way.
Woodbrains says Krenov describes it in a book but I doubt this very much! :lol:

PS Moskowitz misses that finest dovetail were single kerf - one vertical cut to start followed by the two angled cuts in the same kerf.

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Krenov told me about it in person.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

Hello,

Krenov told me about it in person.

Mike.

So it's me and Krenov telling you how to do things! :lol:

 

[custard]

Knocking out the waste on the tail board isn't that big a deal, if you use a fret saw or a chisel, so what, it's just seconds either way.

However, knocking out the waste on a half lap drawer front is minutes rather than seconds, that's what takes the majority of the time. When I've seen the job done in professional workshops the favourite technique is to hog the majority of the waste out with a trim router, and then finish with just a few paring cuts. The craftsmen concerned will always say they do it because it's faster, but I'm not entirely convinced. Even if you're doing six or eight drawer fronts at one go you've still got to find the correct bit and set up the router, you've probably lost at least fifteen minutes right there. I've always harboured a suspicion that there's actually another motive for using a trim router.

There's a line in a Hemingway novel where a character points to some tough looking Alpine chamois hunters in a bar and says they wear gold earrings to help their hearing during the hunt. His wife says no, they actually wear gold earrings to show everyone in bars that they're tough chamois hunters!

I half suspect using a trim router to clear out the pin board waste is a bit like that, you use a trim router to show your fellow craftsmen that you've got balls of steel, and are confident enough with a trim router that you'll put many hours of work at risk by using one.

Consequently in a shared workshop I generally clear pin board waste with trim router, but in my own workshop I take the wussy path and chop them out with a chisel!

 

[Peter Sefton]

I usually chop the waste out of lapped dovetail sockets on drawer fronts but I have setup the students on a fast pillar drill with a router cutter. Best to set up a fence and end stops to stop any movement and use the drill to plunge the waste out.

Cheers Peter

 

[woodbrains]

I usually chop the waste out of lapped dovetail sockets on drawer fronts but I have setup the students on a fast pillar drill with a router cutter. Best to set up a fence and end stops to stop any movement and use the drill to plunge the waste out.

Cheers Peter

Hello,

What a great idea, I must try that. =D>

Mike.

 

[AndyT]

Lurching back onto mortising for a moment...

In the Starship Enterprise plane thread I posted a link to the wonderful Swedish archive films of clog, spoon and chair making. I'd forgotten that the chair sequence includes some lovely shots of a rural craftsman, sitting on the work on a low bench, legs safely out of the way, very quickly cutting a mortice with a robust chisel and mallet. Maybe a bit more chisel wiggling than some would like, but it gets the job done.

https://youtu.be/wGDkliy1DEU?t=10m32s

 

[Jacob]

Lurching back onto mortising for a moment...

In the Starship Enterprise plane thread I posted a link to the wonderful Swedish archive films of clog, spoon and chair making. I'd forgotten that the chair sequence includes some lovely shots of a rural craftsman, sitting on the work on a low bench, legs safely out of the way, very quickly cutting a mortice with a robust chisel and mallet. Maybe a bit more chisel wiggling than some would like, but it gets the job done.

https://youtu.be/wGDkliy1DEU?t=10m32s

Thats a reasonable amount of wiggling if you are doing a blind mortice!
Benches/stools are really handy - sit astride one for peeling yer brussel sprouts, kneading bread in a bowl and 1000 other tasks.
(starting a brussel sprouts thread here - well it's nearly christmas!)

 

[MarkDennehy]

It's fairly obvious - millions must do it the same way.

The thing about "fairly obvious" is that it's usually only "fairly obvious" to people who know what to do and to everyone else who's trying to learn, well, what's obvious is rarely right...

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Lurching back onto mortising for a moment...

In the Starship Enterprise plane thread I posted a link to the wonderful Swedish archive films of clog, spoon and chair making. I'd forgotten that the chair sequence includes some lovely shots of a rural craftsman, sitting on the work on a low bench, legs safely out of the way, very quickly cutting a mortice with a robust chisel and mallet. Maybe a bit more chisel wiggling than some would like, but it gets the job done.

https://youtu.be/wGDkliy1DEU?t=10m32s

Thats a reasonable amount of wiggling if you are doing a blind mortice!
Benches/stools are really handy - sit astride one for peeling yer brussel sprouts, kneading bread in a bowl and 1000 other tasks.
(starting a brussel sprouts thread here - well it's nearly christmas!)

Jacob - don't start that thread! NOBODY needs to cut mortices in brussels sprouts. Not even at Christmas.

Look chaps, this thread has wandered hither and yon since the original question, but so far, nobody has mentioned tenons! If you're going to chop a mortice, you'll need something to stuff in the hole, as it were. So - shoulders first or cheeks first?

 

[MikeG.]

......Look chaps, this thread has wandered hither and yon since the original question, but so far, nobody has mentioned tenons!......

Erm......

....... For every mortise there is a tenon, and it was these I looked forward to less. Cutting the shoulders with the saw is a doddle, once you get to understanding how to work without a reference face or edge for the setting out. Chopping away the 4 faces is a piece of cake with reasonable grain, but there's a reason that the piece of oak you are working with is "green". It's because the sawmill graded it as not good enough for its 3 grades of joinery oak, and therefore the grain is unlikely to be uniform and straight. This leads to much more work chopping away the waste around a tenon, and even, sometimes, sawing it away. Now that really is a pain!

Shoulders first for me.

 

[Jacob]

Cheeks first whilst all still square, then haunches, then mouldings/rebates, then shoulders last.

 

[John15]

Cheeks

 

[MarkDennehy]

I usually put the cheeks into the mortice first. I've tried putting the shoulders into the mortice first but they never seem to fit.



I'll just get my coat....