Freehand straight mortise?
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Tagged: Mortise tenon freehand
- This topic has 8 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 6 months ago by Ecky H.
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25 September 2018 at 6:33 pm #552308
Since using Pauls mortise technique (with a guide) I manage clean straight mortise holes. Freehand, however, I can’t seem to get the hang of it. They never meet up in the middle.
Is this a matter of ‘keep on trying ’till you drop’ or is there a technique involved or a trick I missed? I don’t mind the guide but I like the speed and freedom of freehanding – like with sharpening chisels without a guide, very liberating.
Any thoughts?
Mic
25 September 2018 at 7:34 pm #552311It really just take some practice Mic. Try stepping back and looking at your chisel from the side from time to time. I think we’re all a bit different and some might perceive that the chisel is plumb when it’s actually leaning back toward them slightly – others will feel the opposite. I think you eventually teach your body where plumb really is but it takes practice to develop that feel. I don’t like it either when the mortise doesn’t line up perfectly like I intend, but the good news is once you fill the hole up with a tenon, it really doesn’t matter that much. At that point, all of mine are “perfect” or at least that’s my story.
I should add that for through tenons, I set the mortise gauge slightly wider than the chisel to leave some room to pare the outside face that shows and often times, that is just enough to let me straighten up the walls.
- This reply was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by harry wheeler.
With 18 mortises done of which 8 were guided, I can answer with a beginners experience: take your time and check yourself more often. Setting the mortise lines just a bit wider than the chosen chisel is helped me a lot to manage the deviation of freehand mortising.
If you’re mortising on your bench, you could put a square beside the mortised piece. So you could eyeball whether you’re relatively out of square…Hope that helps,
E.
We always see Paul chopping facing the bench so that plumb is determined by leaning the chisel towards or away from his body. When I cut freehand, which admittedly hasn’t been often, I use a completely different position. I put my hip against the bench so that I’m looking along the jaws of the vice instead of across them. Now, plumb is a matter of leaning left vs. right, which I can see 100% of the time while I’m working. If I lean the chisel forwards or backwards (the dimension I can’t see), it doesn’t matter except at the ends of the mortise. Actually, I usually cut mortises with the jig in this position, too.
26 September 2018 at 8:23 am #552323Thanks for the thoughts guys.
@Ed, the way Paul cuts mortises is confusing. Indeed you’d think that to be able to determine whether you’re plumb or not you need to see the angle, which is more difficult if you’re standing tangential to the angle you’re viewing. Hence I was hoping there’s some trick involved. It’ll be his 50+ years of experience.Another thing you need to check is that the chisels cutting edge is perpendicular to the side of the mortise or it’ll wander off and wreak havoc to the mortise wall. This I do by looking at the reflection of the mortise edge in the chisel: the reflection needs to be in line with the edge.
I can’t do something similar with it being plumb. So then, I’ll just keep on practicing & checking for square after placing the chisel.One last question: do you rely on the chisel cutting edge being square on the chisel?
Mic
26 September 2018 at 10:13 am #552324I try to keep my chisels pretty square Mic. I suppose one could argue that if they aren’t, that may help throw you off. I don’t know if it really would or not. Never tried. But the way Paul chops is the way you see all the master joiners do it and the way it’s depicted in all the books I have. Chopping toward or away from yourself hides the far side of the mortise hole, but whatever works for you. Keep chopping, it gets easier.
27 October 2018 at 3:01 am #552849I’m betting you have the same problem that I had for a long time (still do sometimes if it’s been a while and I’m not paying attention).
When you strike with the mallet you have an instinct to tense the arm/hand holding the chisel. This naturally results in it being pulled slightly towards the body. As a result you can do all of the checking and rechecking you want prior to striking with the mallet and you’ll still end up askew.
The solution to this is one part knowing what the problem is, and nine parts practice. Eventually you can train that reflex out of yourself.
If the mortise leans towards you — this is almost certainly your problem. By leans toward you I mean that a straight edge put against the wall of the mortise will be canted with the top closer to you.
It took me a little while to figure this out for myself, as most woodworkers that write or speak on the subject have long ago lost and forgotten that this reflex even exists — but I’ve seen it in several other new woodworkers and it’s always the same symptom. Knowing about it and actively attempting to prevent the reflex will over time correct the problem.
It sounds like a lot of folk have trouble keeping the chisel straight up and down when they mortise, but my biggest problem is a bit different: twist. I find that when I mortise freehand, my mortise is almost always a bit wider than my chisel. Sometimes it is a lot wider. It took a while to figure out what was happening. When you drive the chisel into the wood for your mortise, the chisel moves backwards away from the bevel. But if the chisel is twisted in the cut just a bit, “backwards” from the point of view of the chisel is no longer straight back in the mortise. Rather, backwards from the chisel’s point of view is at a bit of an angle with respect to the mortise. So the mortise wall widens.
This explains another problem I have. Paul generally cuts a mortise by starting at one end and working his way to the other. But I also tried by starting in the middle and cutting first one direction and then the other. But when I tried this, the resulting mortise and tenon usually ended up twisted. Why? The answer is the same. When I cut in one direction from the center, the chisel twisted one way and when I cut in the other direction from the center, the chisel twisted the other way. So half of my mortise was moving out of true in one direction and the other half was moving out of true in the other direction. The result was twist!
Once I realized that a twisting chisel was my biggest problem, and not whether the chisel was straight up and down, it took a bit longer to figure out why my chisel kept twisting. I could feel it twisting in my hand, and tried to resist it, but could not very well. The reason the chisel twisted is this. When I sharpen freehand, as Paul teaches, I do not generally get my chisels perfectly square. So one corner of my out of square chisel contacts the wood first and when I hit the chisel, it twists on that corner rather than driving in straight. Every time I hit the chisel,it twists a bit more in my hand and hence goes further off course, widening the mortise and making the resulting mortise and tenon twisted. I found that if my chisel is sharpened out of square just a hair, the chisel twists a hair and damages the mortise.
Knowing all this does not mean I can actually freehand a mortise very well, but I am working on it!
Many thanks for your thoughts.
I used two 20mm wide chisels for mortising, but with one of them the mortises came out even worse than with the other. The chisel I had more to struggle with was the one sharpened out of square.And for the record: perfect square sharpened chisels don’t make perfect mortises, but with out of square chisels it’s much easier to muddle mortises.
E.
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