Setting up a (cheap) Morticer

[TobyT]

Hi All,

I'm a forum lurker finally getting round to posting...

A while ago I bought one of the Aldi Morticers. I've now set it up and want to use it to create joints in softwood (50mm x 75mm) for my workbench support.

I was aware when buying it, from here and previous experience with Aldi tools, that the quality wasn't going to be top notch and I would need to do some fettling.

So far the gripes I have are the fence wobbles (only one track and the runner is slightly loose within it) and the holddown does fit properly and gets in the way of larger mortice chisels. I intend to fix the former by building my own fence of some description and use normal clamps for the second. Has anyone knocked something up already which I can copy; otherwise it'll probably be an adaptation of somthing Niki has done.

Perhaps a more vexing question is how to align the mortice chisel so that it is parallel with the fence. Neither the morticer itself or the chisel (yep, cheap ones, I should know better...) comes with any form of indexing system that I can see; the chisel is held into the machine by a grub screw. Any ideas or handy hints?

 

[OLD]

This works for me.
http://www.axminster.co.uk/product-Trend-Trend-Depth-Gauge-22144.htm

 

[joiner_sim]

To make the chisel in the morticer square, get a square piece of timber, clamp it to the fence, and then bring the back of the chisel down and flat against the timber and tighten up the grub screw. Once doing that, I think usually tighten up the drill bit inside the chisel, leaving the cutting point of the drill about 3mm away from the chisel to prevent timber clogging up and the drill bit damaging the chisel.

 

[TobyT]

To make the chisel in the morticer square, get a square piece of timber, clamp it to the fence, and then bring the back of the chisel down and flat against the timber and tighten up the grub screw. Once doing that, I think usually tighten up the drill bit inside the chisel, leaving the cutting point of the drill about 3mm away from the chisel to prevent timber clogging up and the drill bit damaging the chisel.

Thanks - the method seems quite simple when pointed out! The guidelines on setting the drill to chisel are useful as well.

OLD - thanks for your reply as well. I may get one of the Trend gauges as well.