My first chisel experience

Chris Hatfield

Former Member (by the member's request)
Messages
380
I gotta say, I had a good time. My neck didn't, but I did.

I needed to make a ladder for some loft beds, and to match the beds needed to make it out of dimensional lumber. To make it strong, I decided to use M&T.

I used my drill press and a forstner bit to hog out most of the waste and used a 1/2" chisel to try and finish it up. These are HF chisels, and weren't that sharp to begin with and I never did anything to them since. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to try out my WS2000, and it sharpened it up rather well. The tenons were done with the table saw and fine tuned with the chisel. It was nothing to write home about, much less show pictures of.

My question is how to finish up the bottom of the mortise. It was rough and uneven, as best I could to try and make it look nice. The forstner did a good job of making everything even thanks to the depth stop on the DP, but getting the remaining to match up was difficult. While it may not matter in the long-term, I was thinking this was a deficiency.

Project turned out pretty well all things considered, and will support far more weight than my kids will ever put on it.
 
I suppose my perfectionist side got to me.

Let's say you cut the tenon a bit short - what then? Recut the tenon, fill the mortise?
 
I once saw a guy that hooked a board stretcher up crosswise of the board & made the board wider & shorter. He was so frustrated on the next try he got it angled across the board & made wafer chips & toothpicks. So he tried to glue it all back together & made OSB & that is the rest of the story.:rofl::thumb::D

What he really needed was one of these.
 

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if the tenon is short its not a problem either,, for the most cases,, as long as the shoulder to shoulder measurement is what your after..so you wont have as much glue surface but a mortise and tenon is one of the strongest joints out there as it is..
 
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