Hand Chopping Mortises, Nested Tables 2

The nested table project is all about mortise and tenon joints. I've never hand chopped mortises before, so step one was to get a good mortise chisel. I had a couple of sash mortise chisels, but I figured out the hard way that they weren't the best style. The traditional pig-sticker mortise chisle works better, at least for me. The elliptical handle is just more intuitive for keeping longitudinal alignment. I have a 1/4" Marples that I got off E-Bay and a 3/8" Ray Iles from Tools for Working wood. The Ray Iles is a little heavier duty, but both are workable.

It's a good thing that I started on a prototype made from scrap, because there is certainly a learning curve. Look at the mortise in the picture. The wood fibers have blown out the end of the piece. I've never seen wood blow out quite like that. It's good to have this happen on the prototype, not on my expensive mahogany. The solution to this problem was to keep the mortise farther away from the end of the piece and be a little gentler when chopping in.

After several trials, I ultimately got to the point that I could chop the mortises fairly precisely. I scribed a depth line on the side of the chisel with a vibratory marker so that I could keep depth consistent. It is also important to sharpen every face of the chisel since every arris is a cutting edge.