Chopping a mortise the old school way

[Cherryville Chuck]

Here's a good video from Lee Valley showing how to chop a through mortise. Personally I think I would be more inclined to use a jig and router and rout the mortise as far as possible from either side and then chisel the center out. The routed parts would give straight walls to register your chisel against. As long as you register your jig against the same face of the board the mortises should be dead opposite of each other. https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/discove ... OY8,8XPV,1

[tomp]

I watched that video this morning, sent because I'm on their "mailing" list. I think Paul Seller's video showing cutting a mortise is way more informative, just my opinion. Looking at some of these videos, I'd bet that most of the craftsmen could have a mortise completed by the time you get the router out, install the bit and set the edge guide. Now, if it was multiple mortises in a piece of furniture, the router would be quicker.

I watched a video from FWW a while back, the name of the gentleman escapes me at the moment. but he was cutting dovetails for some drawers, in real time, and I was totally amazed at how quickly he was getting them completed - and talking non-stop at the same time. I find as I get older, and not having as much pressure to get work completed, that doing some jobs with hand tools is very relaxing - I edge-banded some plywood drawer fronts and, rather than trimming them with a router, used a block plane. I don't think that it took me much longer to do the three pieces by hand than it would have taken me to set up the trimmer and do it - but not having to put on ear protection, safety glasses and clean up the mess was a big plus.

[Stick486]

doing some jobs with hand tools is very relaxing

for sure...

[Cherryville Chuck]

I watched that video this morning, sent because I'm on their "mailing" list. I think Paul Seller's video showing cutting a mortise is way more informative, just my opinion. Looking at some of these videos, I'd bet that most of the craftsmen could have a mortise completed by the time you get the router out, install the bit and set the edge guide. Now, if it was multiple mortises in a piece of furniture, the router would be quicker.

I watched a video from FWW a while back, the name of the gentleman escapes me at the moment. but he was cutting dovetails for some drawers, in real time, and I was totally amazed at how quickly he was getting them completed - and talking non-stop at the same time. I find as I get older, and not having as much pressure to get work completed, that doing some jobs with hand tools is very relaxing - I edge-banded some plywood drawer fronts and, rather than trimming them with a router, used a block plane. I don't think that it took me much longer to do the three pieces by hand than it would have taken me to set up the trimmer and do it - but not having to put on ear protection, safety glasses and clean up the mess was a big plus.

Post a link here to it here Tom. Someone interested can compare the two then. One of the reasons they do it so well and so fast is lots of practice and also doing it regularly so that the muscle memory isn't forgotten. One of the common themes among our members is that "I do something and then it might be years before I do it again". It's actually come up in discussions numerous times. So for us, mechanization is more reliable and usually faster.

With that said I agree with you on the old school way. I've been doing the exact same thing lately and growing my collection of planes and shaves in the process. Last week as I was finishing up my wife's cart project I banded the ply shelf and despite clamping a straight edge to the upper surface to butt the banding to some of it came out proud. I used a skew chisel to flatten it and it came out so smooth you can't feel the difference between the ply and the banding when you drag your finger over it. It took me between 5 to 10 minutes and was way more fun to do.

[tomp]

Tell me that this gentleman hasn't done this before (a lot). Dovetailing Drawer Not the video I was talking about, but the same gentleman. He was being interviewed for an article, and talking to the interviewer the whole time that he was working. He has quite the system worked out there, stacking two pieces and doing the same operation before flipping. I did like his final clean-up of the completed drawer with a belt sander too. He wrote an article for FWW covering the use of a belt sander in "fine" woodworking.

Two videos from Paul Sellers showing hand-cutting a mortise with a chisel Cutting a Mortise Mortise Cutting Demo I was really amazed at the way he demonstrated cutting the mortise in the second video, the set-up he made to show how the chisel was used to cut the depth of the mortise. He is an outstanding teacher, definitely not as easy as he makes it look.

I have spent a lot of time watching Paul's videos, hopefully learning something - usually that it's not as easy as he makes it look, and that I need a lot more practice. Same with the videos by Rob Cosman and Matt Estlea (among others).

I'm working on a cabinet at the moment (and it's been many moments - long story) where I made the face frame proud of the sides (next one will use Mark Sommerfeld's router bits to cut the tongue and groove joint) and am finishing up flushing the frame with the side of the cabinet. I trimmed the frame close to flush with a block plane and am now in the process of finishing up with a cabinet scraper - the finish of the surface is head and shoulders above that made by a trimmer bit, and with no possibility of the oak chipping out on the corner if the grain is a little wild.

[Cherryville Chuck]

I like using cabinet scrapers too. Like you say, they come pretty close to eliminating the chance of a screw up.I've used those to level banding too. I've needed to level banding after putting laminate on so that they are flush with each other. If you take a couple of strips of masking tape and wrap around the part of he blade that's going to be over the laminate at at the corner you can level the banding and not risk scratching it. It puts a very slight downward angle on the banding but not enough to be noticeable.

[tomp]

I do the same thing with a couple of layers of masking tape on the inner edge of the scraper. And have done the same thing when flushing edge banding down with the plastic laminate. We changed the method to have the laminate overhang the edge banding and then cut an ogee along the edge, with the corner of the upper shoulder on the profile in line with the bottom of the laminate - just like the attached photo.

IMG_3323.JPG

[tomp]

Ran across this video European Dovetail Method where the same basic method of cutting dovetails as the previous video that I posted is demonstrated. During the video, the gentleman mentions that the method he was demonstrating is how he was taught by his (Hungarian) grandfather. He also mentions that he watched a woodworker from South America demonstrate the same method. It was interesting though to see that he used a small router to remove the majority of the waste in a half-blind dovetail, and to hear him say that he grandfather would have definitely used the "router method" had it been available at the time.