Tools a Visual History by Dominic Chinea

Author:Dominic Chinea
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241614020
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Ltd

A mortice chisel is a square-edged chisel that’s used mainly to cut out a mortice, and in case that hasn’t helped explain it, a mortice is a rectangular or square hole. It’s one half of a mortice and tenon joint (the tenon being a projection in a bit of wood that fits into the mortice).

You use a mortice chisel by striking the end of the handle with a mallet or hammer to chop out pieces of wood and lever them out. Seeing as it does take quite a bit of punishment, everything about it needs to be strong, so the blade is made of steel with a sturdy neck that connects to a strong hardwood handle so it doesn’t split.

A person who’s a bit of a hero in the vintage tool world and was always going to get a mention in this book is Joseph Moxon. He was the first person to write a DIY book (in the English language) and it may come as a surprise to find out that he wrote it in the 1670s. It was called Mechanick Exercises: or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works and in the year after the first part of the book was published, he became the first tradesman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. He broke down some serious class barriers.

The reason I’m bringing him up here is because he’s got a lot of time for the humble mortice chisel and goes into great detail about cutting out a mortice. It may seem quite amazing to read an instructional guide dating from the 1600s that you can follow, but the techniques haven’t really changed. What has changed is the metal used to make the blade – now carbon steel, which has been tempered and hardened. There’s also usually a leather washer between the blade and the handle, which absorbs the impact of the mallet.

A mortice chisel is one of the most satisfying tools I’ve ever used. That feeling when you cut your first mortice and tenon joint and you realize that you’ve done your measurements right and everything slots together and fits (and it’s not too tight so you have to hammer it in) is amazing – give it a go! It’s a good one for you to try if you want to get in to woodworking, because there are no funny angles, so you can just use an engineer’s square. Once you’ve mastered it, you can incorporate a mortice and tenon joint into all sorts of things, such as when making shelves or a chest of drawers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.