Reply To: Having trouble chopping bench mortises
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First, thanks everyone. I think I’ve confirmed my original hypothesis (the wood is very soft) and with your help I have a couple of ways to go forward.
The crew installing our sump pumps left early so I went out to the garage, took some pictures, and did some experiments. Pictures attached.
I found that my plain old ordinary left thumb nail could actually slice into this wood with the grain and easily crease it across the grain. That’s soft! Also the spaces between the dark lines of the rings is over 3/8″ in some places on this wood. When I put my “harder wood” (from a scrap bin, probably Doug fir) 4X4 onto the workmate and started chopping I got EXACTLY the same results Paul shows in his bench making video. At the far end I could set my chisel right on the knife wall, bevel forward, and the knife wall remained pristine after the chisel was driven into the wood. Finally, I pulled out a measuring tape and looked to see exactly what 1/8″ looks like and thought about the slices I was taking on that wood. Some of them were probably closer to 3/16″ and I aint tellin’ if they were over or under that line.
So, at a minimum I need to take much smaller slices and keep the bevel a long way from the knife walls. Greg I’ve got confidence my chisels are sharp enough but that tip about the sound paid off. It’s different because I’m working on a workmate but the you can hear when the sound goes from the wood to the metal of the workmate. I missed that before. I’ll think about the mortise chisels. I have noticed the bevel chisels twisting occasionally.
Again, thanks for the help. It’s still a long road ahead but now I can keep moving!
John