Vol.1 No.14
14 August 2002

George Hoffman Answers the Following Question on Joinery


Q. Through tenons is a characteristic of Arts and Crafts style furniture and crisp corners are necessary for the mortises. Can you recommend a source for appropriate scale chisels or give some technical suggestions for doing a first rate job with this?


A. Techniques for making mortises; Micro size carving tools are available in the MicroMark catalog (spring 2002 page 38) and at; http://www.craftsmanstudio.com/ select, New- Two Cherries Carving tools, then; “Sets, small, micro carving tools”. NOTE they are not inexpensive.

Cutting a mortise in a thin piece of door rail etc would be a very difficult accomplishment, not that it can’t be done but just very hard to do without splitting out the sides. It would take a lot of practice to achieve a decent result.

I really prefer using the drill press (The Cameron as we used at The Guild School, Castine, Maine) using an end mill and slide table with a mounted vise as shown below in drawing #1.

If you do not have a slide table with a mounted vise you can use a drill press with a straight piece of wood clamped to the table. Hold your work-piece tight against the clamped board and drill a slot for your mortise by moving work-piece from left to right, using an up and down motion as you push the piece across. (Drawing #2 below)

The best cutting tool I have found for this job is an end mill--the size is determined by the thickness of the stock you are using. The mortise is generally 1/3 the thickness of your work piece, with tenon cut out 1/3 on each side. This is the normal setup. (Note, there are times when a mortise is off center changing the measurements.)

End mills are available from MicroMark catalog and a much better source with more sizes is http://www.grandtool.com/ I suggest that you request their catalog to choose from sizes offered. Look for Miniature end mills with 1/8” shank unless you have a drill press with a larger chuck capacity.

Another site offering 1/8” shanks is: http://www.endmilldiscount.com/pmt2.html.

Note! Use high speed steel not carbide in these small sizes. The carbide is very brittle and will break costing you $$.