1. Carving the easy way. From time to time, a carved panel just might look wonderful in a piece of casework: a pair of doors, perhaps with matching motifs; a backsplash that has a geometric pattern repeating across its length; a carved architectural component. If carving is outside your wheelhouse of woodworking skills, a CNC router can come to your rescue. Those carved accents can enhance your project, and you get the credit!

2. Drilling is boring. Let’s say you have a couple hundred holes to drill for a cribbage board. It’s a doable job with a drill/driver or a drill press, but an arduous one. Now imagine making five cribbage boards for holiday gifts: you’ll have 1,000 holes to drill! If done by hand, just imagine how tedious the task would be! Not for a CNC. It will drill holes all day long without complaint.

3. CNC simplifies complex interfaces between workpieces. For example, Woodworker’s Journal once presented a Longworth Chuck project for woodturning with many curved slots that need to perfectly relate to one another. Unless they align precisely, the chuck won’t open and close smoothly. A CNC’s precision enables it to machine slots like these accurately, upping your odds for success the first time while also reducing your stress.

4. “May I have five more?” Have you ever agreed to build a bunch of things for your child’s school or for a church function? After you have completed the 20th little widget and you are staring down another 100 to go, you think to yourself: “There has got to be a more efficient way…” It’s CNC. Set the machine to work in the background to free yourself for more enjoyable shop tasks.

5. Consider it a sign! Of course, one of the best uses of CNC technology in the home shop is for sign-making. It can machine awards, cabin signs, humorous gifts, address plaques and much more. Most home shop CNCs come with sign-making programming already preloaded, along with fancy fonts and scripts with the lettering properly spaced. Here’s a moneymaking opportunity!

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There is a product called “amalgamator” meant to do just that: melt lacquer back to smoothness. The problem is that it consists of a mixture of strong primary solvents, and while it will soften and blend a finish, it will take it completely off just as easily. Because it is so tricky to use, the one company I know of that is selling it tries to restrict its sale to professional finishers. Fortunately, there are easier reliable methods.

If the lacquer is thick enough, you can buff out scuffs with either rubbing and polishing compound, for gloss lacquer, or with 0000 steel wool and paste wax, for satin finishes. With lacquer that’s not thick enough to buff, you can clean the surface, sand lightly to blend out the scuffs, then go over it with another coat of the same type of lacquer.

Nitrocellulose and most acrylic lacquers re-melt themselves with each coat. That means a wet coat will soften and blend into the old lacquer, effectively flowing out and hiding the scuffs. Many repair folks, in cases like this, pre-spray the finish with a thin coat of retarder, or even just lacquer thinner, prior to spraying the coat of lacquer. This will help soften and flow the surface, making it more likely to hide unsightly scuff marks.

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Making the Cut: Angle, Blade Size, Direction

Angled cuts are made with the saw table or arm tilted left or right. Tilting the saw table down to one side is the equivalent of tilting the arm to the opposite side. When the gauge reads zero degrees, a cutout piece will slip completely through the surrounding wood. As the cutting angle increases, less of the piece can be pushed through before it binds. Larger blades create wider kerfs than smaller ones, which means that more of the piece can be pushed through at a given angle than if the cut were made with a smaller blade. That’s why it’s a good idea to make test cuts to determine the best cutting angle for the blade and wood you’ll be using.

The cut is made either “clockwise” or “counterclockwise,” which refers to how the blade appears to move through the wood.

Double-bevel Inlay

“Double-bevel inlay,” unlike the traditional type, does not require a separately made recess. Instead, it is created from two pieces of equally thick wood (one decorative, the other the base), stacked and secured with tape or hot glue.

Which piece is placed on top depends on the particular design. A pattern is attached and a blade entry hole drilled on the cutting line, using the smallest bit that will accommodate the blade. You then cut the pattern at an angle that allows the decorative piece to seat into its matching recess in the base.

Entry holes are usually drilled at the same angle as the cut, leaving small holes that are usually invisible when filled with a mixture of glue and sawdust. Make your test cuts with simple shapes, and start with an angle typical for your wood thickness and blade size.

Wood that is 1/4″ thick, for example, is usually cut between 2° and 3°, depending on blade size. If the cutout drops too much, increase the cutting angle by 1/2°; if too little, decrease it by 1/2°. Continue testing until the cutout is level or protrudes only slightly from the base.

Collapsible Baskets

These intriguing baskets spring, like magic, from a flat piece of wood. The mechanism is a spiral, cut at an angle that allows the rings to drop, grab and create a recess, yet not slip through each other. Made from a single piece of stock, the straight-cut frame and support pieces are cut away first, then the spiral portion is cut clockwise from its center at an appropriate angle.

For 3/4″-thick stock and a #7 blade, this angle is about 2-1/2°, depending on the desired amount of drop. Test cuts are best done as small complete spirals, since several rotations are needed to establish the drop. When cutting is complete, the components are assembled.

As with any new skill, cutting at an angle requires practice. Once you’ve mastered this skill, you’ll increase both your project repertoire and your appreciation of the scroll saw’s versatility.

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Burls range in size from one that a turner would be hard-pressed to get a 6″ salad bowl out of to thousands of pounds, big leaf maple and redwood being examples of the latter. Today, these huge burls are often slabbed for live-edge furniture.

The comparative rarity and unusual appearance of these wood growths contribute to their appeal for woodturners (and other woodworkers) — but, before you can work with a burl, you have to find it and acquire it.

Finding Burls

Many burls occur on the roots of a tree but go largely undetected for the simple fact that 60% of the biomass of any given tree is underground. If they occur at about the same rate on the roots as on the aboveground portion of the tree, the chances are 10% higher to have a root burl.

The lumbering industry does not harvest the roots of trees in either selective or clear cutting, leading to many burls going undetected. Nowadays, burl hunters dig up the roots of trees noted for having root burls, such as manzanita, rhododendron and laurel. All of these species are shrubs, making root harvesting easier. A certain number of root burls that are partially visible at the root knees get harvested as well.

A watchful walk through any hardwood forest will invariably turn up a burl or two. In northeastern Ohio, cherry, maple, oak, buckeye (the Ohio state tree), ash, willow, locust and walnut burls are common.

Cherry burls are usually a prominent mound on the tree’s stem anywhere from ground level to just under the canopy. Burls of other wood species vary from a mound to almost surrounding the tree and can extend far up and down the stem as well. Sometimes the tree’s stem is completely covered with burls — a common condition of willows.

Burls are also common in yard trees, such that looking at roadside trees on any drive will turn up quite a number. Tree surgeons frequently encounter them, making these good people for turners to befriend.

Process of Harvesting

Removing a small burl from a tree is straightforward: simply cut a little below where the burl is attached. Larger burls are not so easy. It is my feeling that harvesting burls is somewhat like cutting diamonds: there is a knack to it.

As you can see on the huge oak burl in the photo, there are three visible lobes to this particular burl. A chainsaw cut down each of these fault lines would be the first order of business. Then the sections would be parted from the tree stem. They end up being like slices of an orange. Each section would be further sawn down to usable blanks or sent to a veneer mill.

For 35 years, I have bought both kiln-dried wood and burl from Doll Lumber Company, a forestry and sawmill operation which is located about 10 minutes from my shop. In my online video for this article, Jim Doll shows his company’s process for harvesting burl.

Working With Burls

When it comes to working with wood from burls, there are a few things to keep in mind. Burl differs greatly from normal wood in that burl grain grows randomly in interlocking circles. This means that burl can be turned wet but does not change shape much from shrinkage during drying. Because the wood is essentially homogenized, it shrinks fairly equally in all directions.

Sharp tools always are a must, but you can cut in any direction, and scrapers work very well.

Because burl is expensive wood, many turners will make several nesting bowls out of one burl by making cone separations. A very large parting tool (or special curved cutters mounted in a fixture) is employed to cut into the bowl at approximately a 45° angle until only a small tenon is holding the cone, which can then be broken away by inserting a pry bar in the kerf and applying some force.

(I’ll discuss these processes by actually coring several bowls from the cherry burl harvested in this article in my next installment, and I’ll show how to complete the final turning of these cores in a subsequent article.)

Burl must be sanded well. Start with 80-grit and work to 180-grit in small steps.

I finish burl bowls with multiple coats of oil finish, waiting 24 hours between coats and sanding each new coat with finer paper. Second coat is 220-grit with the third and all subsequent coats at 320-grit.

Turning burls is great fun, and I encourage you to give it a try!

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I consider myself a hand tool woodworker, but now that my workbench is out of my laundry room and I finally have a proper shop, I am learning to rely on my electric “apprentices” more and more. I’m glad I learned to do so many of these operations by hand first, because I have a much better understanding about the hows and whys of things — but I can also thank my lucky stars I don’t have to hand-thickness lumber anymore, because I’ve done it many, many times. Knowing the time and tedium I’m saving with each pass through my thickness planer brings a big grin to my face these days. Using machines in conjunction with hand tools, at least for me, makes every project infinitely more enjoyable. Because this is a hand tool-heavy project after the machines are off, I figured it was also a great opportunity to put Rockler’s new line of Bench Dog® Tools hand planes to the test.

Choosing, Preparing Stock

Part of the reason this cabinet took me so long to build was because I care DEEPLY about details. Grain selection is very important to me. I’m known to create a lot of firewood cutting the section I like right out of the middle of the board, which may be viewed as wasteful. But I think about the cost of a few extra sticks of wood (which seems expensive when I’m at the checkout counter of the hardwood store) in correlation with the number of hours I plan to invest in the project and the number of years I plan to have it hanging in my home, my children’s home and their children’s, too. A few extra dollars to get the perfect piece for every single part of the project suddenly becomes a lot easier to swallow.

This project was no exception. I designed the exterior of the cabinet to use one long piece of lumber for the three “show” sides of the case. I cut them so the wood grain from the original piece would run continuously around the exterior of the cabinet.

The alder I used for the main cabinet “bones” was S4S, but I never trust that S4S is square or flat, so I took this 3/4″ stock down to roughly 5/8″ when surfacing it at the jointer and planer. I left everything as thick as possible and sized it all to match. I always leave a little extra length on things, and I never prep an entire project based on a cut list before beginning work, because when cutting joinery by hand, some on-the-fly design adjustments may need to be made.

Sharpening Tools

Once my stock is prepped, no matter how excited I am to make that first cut, I sharpen all the hand tools I’ll use on the project. A sharp tool is a safe tool, and I tend to make way fewer mistakes when my tools work the way they should. Speaking of sharpening, it was at this point in the project that I also unboxed a few of the Bench Dog planes to get them ready. The fit and finish was about what I expected for the price point. I was, however, quite pleasantly surprised about a few details: the quality of the steel in the plane irons, the fact that the soles and the mating bits were machined very flat, and that their machined edges had been eased prior to shipping, making for much more ergonomic tools right out of the box.

Here’s the way I like to look at tool pricing: you can either pay a higher cost up front to get a better fit and finish from the start (you are paying someone else for their time to degrease, polish, refine, set up and focus on all the little details that need to be attended to after the tool is manufactured). Or, you are saving money buying less expensive tools and spending your own time attending to those details. If you have time and the understanding of what it takes to set up and make tools work the way they should, you can “afford” to buy more budget-friendly new tools and antique tools and, after a little elbow grease, you end up with quality, well-functioning tools that do the jobs they were made to do.

Regarding the Bench Dog plane I used here, I invested about 35 minutes from the time I opened the box until I was taking good shavings.

Building the Door

Frame-and-panel doors are traditionally created with a groove in the center for the panel, and the rails and stiles are joined with haunched mortises and tenons. Due to the small size of this cabinet door and the fact that it bears virtually no weight, I was able to save a significant amount of time and degrees of complication by using simple tongue-and-groove assembly for the entire door. I cut grooves in the rails and stiles, then short tenons to fit them using a dado stack and a crosscut sled on the table saw. I sized the walnut door panel to a hair under the depth of the groove so it can float freely within the door frame. I left the rails and stiles overly wide so I could sneak up on a perfect fit inside the cabinet opening after the case had been assembled.

Moving On to the Case

The case pieces need a rabbet along their inside back edges to fit the back slats and a sliding dovetail (or a dado … dealer’s choice) for the shelf. I did both of these operations at the router table. Do yourself a favor and take the time to make a “practice” corner piece of the case to get all the kinks worked out on your machines and get some practice cutting the joints; then you’ll have a reference for which joint goes where and how as you build the actual case. The ends of each piece of stock on the practice piece are also great for practicing a few saw cuts before plunging down the dovetail “tunnel” for the corner joints.

I always second-guess myself when using the router, because it’s one tool that can ruin both your project and your hands in a real hurry. For one-off cuts, I generally gravitate towards a hand tool-cut joint — that’s faster for me than the tool setup required for joinery operations on the router. But if multiple cuts need to be made, the router table is a great choice. If you don’t have a router table, you can cut the rabbets with a dado stack and, instead of using a sliding dovetail to attach the shelf, a stopped dado will suffice just fine. Regardless of the tool you use, having extra stock on hand that is the exact same dimension as your workpieces will be helpful in both tool setup and in peace of mind by providing the opportunity to practice a few times first.

I cut all the rabbets in the case parts at the same time for efficiency. Then I fit one side of the shelf into the sliding dovetail “mortise” in the side case pieces, but I left the other shelf end long to get an exact length once the cabinet was assembled. I left the router table set up until the case was together, then measured, cut and routed the other end of the shelf accordingly.

Cut these joints precisely, but be ready to make a few refinements with hand tools if needed. For instance, I like to oversize my tenons ever so slightly on the table saw so I can use a shoulder plane to creep up on their final fit.

In Hindsight…

I realized about halfway through this project that I could have avoided several degrees of complication if I had used a dado around the back of the case instead of a rabbet to capture the back slats and to make room for the French cleat. I could have then modified the dovetail joinery with one straight pin at the back, which would hide the groove, instead of the crazy step-down dovetail mind-game I used on this project that you can see in the Drawings. That said, though, I actually think the aesthetic of that weird dovetail on the back really makes this project special. Live and learn, right?

Getting Ready for Dovetails!

I could write an entire article on cutting dovetails, but that is for another time and place. Still, here’s my basic procedure. I like to cut tails-first dovetails, using the tail boards as a pattern for the pin boards. Because of the mechanics of the dovetail joint, your two long case pieces — the sides — need to be your tail boards, and your top and bottom case pieces will be the pin boards. I set my marking gauge a hair past the thickness of the case piece stock, then mark the faces and edges of each end with the board secured to the bench using bench hooks. I make a light pass first to establish my gauge line, then deepen it with a few more strokes. A heavy hand will cause the marking gauge to follow the grain of the wood, and you’ll end up with an inconsistent layout.

I then use two sets of dividers: one is set to my pin thickness and the other is set to the width of one tail plus one pin. They step out the dovetail layout so my dovetail spacing is consistent throughout the project. (If you like a more handmade, randomized look to your dovetails, mark them out by eye.)

Next, I use a dovetail marker and marking knife to carry those divider pin pricks across the board’s thickness and down the slope of the dovetails. This can also be done with a bevel gauge and square if you don’t have a dedicated dovetail marker. I prefer a dovetail with a 1:7 slope. I mark out the waste clearly with a pencil, then make my first cuts with a joinery saw. I always “split the line,” and that works great for me. I saw all the way down to the line, cutting all the left-facing sloped cuts across the board, followed by the right-facing slopes.

If you are new to dovetails, you can cut on the waste side of your line, but that will involve far more time with a chisel, which adds hours to the project and increases the probability of over-refining, chiseling the joint out of square and ending up with gappy dovetails.

On both the backsaw and coping saw, a little lubrication will go a long way to help keep binding and skipping at bay. I use mutton tallow, which smells like baking lamb when the saw heats up. Other folks like beeswax. Both options work great.

Once I’ve cut the majority of the waste out with a coping saw, I chisel the rest by hand. I cut out all my tails, then stack them in succession on my workbench, clamped directly over the leg of my bench to chop out the waste. A lot of folks like to use a sacrificial board between each board and also to protect the bench, but I like to pride myself on my chisel control. Saving that extra step in setup also saves me a lot of time. I chop my waste inward and at a slight angle from either shoulder, meeting in the middle of the joint. I like leaving a little extra wiggle room when it comes to final assembly, because if any little morsels are dislodged and caught in that little valley between the tails, they’ve got a place to go and won’t stay put and keep the joint from seating fully.

The short pin in the back is really tricky, but if you think of it in these terms — it’s a short little extra dovetail stepped down from the others — it makes a lot more sense. And, if you’ve cut your practice corner like I suggested, you already know how it works!

To mark the pins, I clamp the pin board in my vise so it’s level with a hand plane turned on its side. When the vise is tight, I slide the plane back lay the tail board over pin board and the plane, and secure it with a holdfast and a sacrificial block in the middle. I use the flashlight on my phone to look for a tiny, even light reveal between the tail and pin boards, indicating that the boards are aligned perfectly square to one another. Check your setup with a carpenter’s square at this point, because accurate execution of transferring the dovetail pattern squarely from one board to the other is absolutely crucial to the squareness of your cabinet.

Next, I use my marking knife to scribe the pattern of the tails onto the end of the pin board. I mark out my waste RIGHT THEN AND THERE to save a few headaches later on. I use a square and marking knife to continue the pin lines onto the front and the back faces of the pin board. Saw down to your gauge lines, remove the waste with the coping saw, and chisel the shoulders down to the gauge lines with a slight bevel inwards, creating a “waste valley” in the middle of the joint. I use a dovetail square (a regular small double square works fine if you don’t have one) to check the sides, shoulders and baseline of each and every tail and pin for square and to make sure there’s no waste crumbs that will keep the joint apart, come assembly time.

The whole half-pin half-tail thing to hide the rabbet for the back slats is a bit tricky to cut, but a steady saw hand and a little fancy chisel work made quick work of it for me.

Because I planned to use shellac to finish the whiskey cabinet, I pre-finished all of the interior pieces at this point to avoid any glue spots that might otherwise show up later. The blonde amber shellac turned the spalted alder and figured walnut a beautiful rich tone. I did a single coat, being careful not to contaminate any glue surfaces with finish, then moved on to the glue-up.

Gluing Up the Case

I find it very helpful to label all my parts and their mating edges clearly, prior to glue-up. It is no fun realizing too
late that you’re trying to drive the wrong pins into the wrong tails or vice versa. Think before you act. Lay out your clamps before opening the glue, and work carefully and efficiently, keeping the open time of the glue in mind. A well-placed caul just below the protrusion point for the pins and tails will help apply even pressure to seat the dovetails around the exterior of the case. Sometimes a little persuasion is needed with a leather-padded-mallet, but if excessive force is required, your joints need further refinement.

Assembling, Fitting the Door

During this portion of the glue-up, remember that the door’s center panel must continue to float inside the frame to accommodate seasonal wood movement. Be careful not to accidentally glue it into its grooves. Also, be wary of too much clamping pressure, as you could cause your door to rack or warp.

With the door assembled, I could move on to hanging it in the case. To do that, I laid my cabinet flat and set the oversized door on top of it. I centered it perfectly over the cabinet, then traced the case’s opening onto the door’s back face from inside with a pencil. I then painstakingly removed the exact same amount of material from opposite sides of the door, shaving by shaving, until the door fit the opening. This way, if your case is racked at all, you can create a custom door to match it, and you won’t end up with visually uneven rails and styles. This definitely is a slow process, but that perfectly even door reveal is worth it.

Adding the Back Slats

I like to space my back slats perfectly using coins or playing cards between them; that also allows for a bit of slip space for cross-grain expansion and contraction. For this cabinet, I pinned them into place with cut nails and captured them against the back rabbet of the case with the French cleat.

You can attach the cleat to the case with tenons, dowels or Dominos (if you remember them during glue-up) or with a long-grain glue joint and a couple of well-placed pin nails or brass screws if you forget. (By the way, I would NEVER forget…)

Once the glue dried, I got rid of any extra glue squeeze-out, sanded the shellacked surfaces with 400-grit sandpaper and applied another coat of shellac. Generally, three to four coats of shellac is plenty to make wood grain really pop, but I decided to wait until after the door was installed to apply the last coat.

Hanging the Door

With the door planed to final shape, I could finally hang it. I used business cards to wedge the door into place, then a marking knife, marking gauge and double square to mark the hinge placement.

Following tradition, I positioned the hinges just in from where the rails meet the panel. Then, I used a straight bit in my router, setting the bit’s depth of cut off of the thickness of the hinge leaf itself. The router removed the majority of the waste from the hinge mortise on both the door and the cabinet.

I chiseled out the rest. I predrilled my screw holes and installed the slotted brass screws, clocking each one. It’s little details like this that have the potential to set one’s work apart.

A Tiny Pull Wraps It Up

The last step in completing this cabinet was to turn a little door pull. Because the walnut door panel has a strip of sapwood adjacent to where I would install the pull, I carefully selected a piece of walnut that had sapwood running diagonally through it. I turned it on my lathe using carbide tools because it was just so dang small, then I mounted it in my drill chuck to sand and finish it. A tiny screw fastened it to the door.

This has been one of my favorite projects to date. I ended up getting so caught up in all the fun little details and woodworking nerdery that my “simplified” project still ended up taking an enormous amount of time to complete. I’m planning to build another one, but I won’t mind that challenge one bit.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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On a recent file cabinet project, I wanted to have two locking drawers. I selected cam locks to do the job, and even found them in an antique brass finish. Since I was installing the locks on drawers with false fronts, I needed the cam barrel to be long enough to reach through the entire drawer front … 1-1/4″ thick in my case. I purchased 1-3/4″ cylinder locks and set out to install them on my finished drawer boxes.

The first step is to mark the location of the hole in the false drawer front. To determine where the hole should be located, assemble the cam lock and choose which cam arm to use. The kit comes with a short, bent-arm cam and a long, straight cam. Based on the dimensions of my cabinet frame, I selected the long, straight cam.

With the center of the hole location marked on a piece of painter’s tape, head to the drill press. Use a 3/4″ Forstner bit to drill a hole through the false drawer front. Make sure to back up the cut to prevent chipout on the back side.

Next, mount the false drawer front onto the drawer box as you normally would. Set the false drawer front for an even reveal, and screw it to the drawer. Now chuck the 3/4″ Forstner bit into a handheld drill and finish drilling through the drawer box. Clamp a scrap of wood to the inside of the drawer to back up the cut.

Install the cam lock into the drawer, and use the optional trim ring if desired. A two-pronged washer pierces the inside of the drawer to prevent the lock from turning. That is followed by the nut to hold everything firmly in place. Then select either the 90° stop or 180° stop. I use the 90° stop for a shorter locking action. That is followed by the cam and cam retaining screw.

Great; now the cam lock is installed on your drawer and you’re just about finished. There’s just one problem … there’s nothing for the cam to engage in the cabinet. The usual solution is to mount a small metal tab inside the cabinet frame.

The problem with this method is the tab hangs down and can snare the file contents as you open the drawer. To get around this limitation, I used a biscuit joiner to cut a slot in the cabinet frame. Mark the location where the cam meets the cabinet when the drawer is fully closed. For the 1-3/4″ long cam lock, the slot was centered 1-3/4″ back from the front of the drawer. Then set your biscuit joiner for maximum depth of cut. Mine is marked “0,” “10,” “20” and “M.” I selected the M setting for maximum depth of cut. Adjust the fence on the tool until the blade aligns with your mark and plunge a single slot for each drawer. Reinstall the drawer and test the lock operation. If the cam tab hangs up on the edge of the slot, make a small fence adjustment on your biscuit joiner and widen the slot.

Download the PDF of This Article.

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But similarities end there, starting with speed. While large industrial mortisers may offer multiple speeds, those for the home shop are generally single-speed direct-drive units operating at 1,725 rpm (although a few are 3,450 rpm).

Since the bit alone does all cutting on a drill press, the low-torque feed levers take a few rotations for a complete stroke. The feed on a mortiser, meanwhile, fully lowers the auger/chisel assembly in a single, high-torque pull to power the chisel into the workpiece.

Finally, a clamping and hold-down mechanism is absolutely essential on a mortiser. Just as a lot of torque is needed to force the chisel into the wood, substantial holding power is needed to grip the workpiece when retracting the chisel. These hold-downs are typically part of a fence built into the base itself.

A mortiser’s business end is a two-part assembly consisting of a square, hollow chisel with a very long auger nestled inside. The chisel mounts to the quill, while the bit goes in the chuck. When lowered into the workpiece, the two parts work as a team to create a square hole. Because the auger’s cutting tip is slightly ahead of the cutting edges of the chisel, when lowered into the workpiece it creates a round hole and removes most of the waste. The edges of the chisel follow right behind, with the sharp downward corners squaring up the hole.

Mortiser Safety and Maintenance

Most of the safety practices for drill presses apply to mortisers, but there are two additional things to be aware of with mortisers.

The first is that mortising chisels are wicked sharp all the way around the square opening. What’s more, the corners of that opening are extended downward into extremely sharp points. Be very careful with these, as it’s easy to unintentionally brush a hand against them when setting up a workpiece (he says with the conviction of experience).

Mortisers also require a good deal of muscle power, and an extended period of usage can result in an arm that aches for a day or two afterward — pace yourself when mortising to avoid overdoing it.

Mortiser chisels, like any chisels, must be sharp at all times. A dull mortising chisel not only creates splintery mortises, it also greatly increases the force needed to drive it into the wood.

Hone these chisels regularly with a dedicated hollow-chisel sharpener. These look a lot like countersinking bits, but have honing edges or an abrasive surface. Chucked into a standard drill/driver, periodically hone out the opening to resharpen the cutting edges. After doing the inside, hone the flat sides of the opening to remove any burrs.

Using a Mortiser

Installing the chisel is a three-step process. Ideally, the cutting tip of the auger never touches the chisel opening. If it did, it couldn’t bore the lead hole ahead of the chisel, chips couldn’t be directed up and out through the side openings of the chisel and, worse, the rubbing would quickly build up extreme heat, potentially ruining the chisel. Instead, the parts are installed such that the bit is slightly ahead of the chisel. To accomplish this, the chisel goes on first, snugged up to the quill with a small spacer — a dime is perfect for this.

With the chisel temporarily secured, slide the auger up through the center of the chisel. (To avoid getting cut, use a small scrap of wood to raise it.) When it’s seated in the chisel, secure the auger in the chuck as you would any drill bit.

Finally, loosen the chisel, remove the dime, and slide the top of the chisel firmly against the quill. Make sure the rear face of the chisel is aligned with the front of the fence, and retighten it.

Unless cutting through-mortises, the next step is to set the mortise depth. Mark the outside of the workpiece to match the length of the tenon, and then lower the chisel to the line. The bottom of a stopped mortise is pretty ragged, and although it’s hidden inside the joint, you still need enough room for the tenon to seat, plus a bit of space for glue to collect when the tenon is inserted, so you want the mortise bottom beyond the end of the tenon. Lower the chisel a bit farther; about halfway between the downward corners and the curved edges is about right. Holding the chisel at this point, set the depth control.

If you haven’t already, outline the location of your mortise on the workpiece. Adjust the fence to center the workpiece under the tip of the auger and lock it down. Now, adjust the hold-down to keep the workpiece from rising when the chisel is retracted. The hold-down should rest atop the workpiece snugly enough to keep it down on the table, but not so tight that you can’t slide the workpiece from side to side.

Plug in the machine and turn it on, then lower the chisel smoothly into the wood at one end of your mortise outline. The drill will clear the way, but it will take some muscle on the lever to drive in the chisel. Raise the chisel, slide the workpiece so the other end of the mortise is lined up, and repeat the process.

With the ends of the mortise defined, nibble out the waste in the middle with a series of overlapping plunges into the wood until the entire mortise is cleared.

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