Mortise Pal - Shop Made Templates

For those of you with a Mortise Pal or similar jig. I was bemoaning the lack of a template for 1/4" by 1" mortise. It took me awhile to wonder why I didn't just make one!?!

Cut some blanks of the right size. This hardboard happened to be packing material in a recent shipment I received.



Using your original to setup your stops, drill the appropriate size holes, counterbores, whatever. With an original to act as a setup guide, this goes pretty quick.

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And there you go. The slot is created by using a forstner bit, again using the original template as a setup guide. To create the oval, I connected the holes with a chisel just as you might when using a forstner bit to drill a mortise. You can see how this one falls between a couple of the templates supplied, way back when, during the original MP's introduction.

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I gave it a quick test to be sure the alignment was OK. Excuse the rough edges, these were a couple of cut-offs from some prior parts. This will come in handy for the door frames where I wanted 1" tenons that are coming up on my current project.

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sweet!

So if I understand it well, one needs to make one of those templates for each different length and width mortise, isn't it? And the jig is only to keep them centered and at the right distance from de perpendicular edge.

Having that clear I wonder how tenoning jigs are, obviously having a mortising one somehow forces you to use loose tenons or cut them by hand where the precision that you get with the mortise may be spoiled by the unprecision of the hand made one.
Thanks for posting this Glenn, I'm starting to appreciate my router, as Carol told me once, a router is a jig machine, and there lies its versatility.

Toni Ciuraneta said:

So if I understand it well, one needs to make one of those templates for each different length and width mortise, isn't it? And the jig is only to keep them centered and at the right distance from de perpendicular edge

Click to expand...

Quite correct Toni . The jig comes with a good selection of templates. I just found myself wanting some that were "in between" the included ones. I do use floating tenons and that is what the jig is designed for. I make my own tenon stock out of scraps from the same wood I am using for the project.

Carol is right, as usual . A router is more than what it appears. It is a motorized cutter that you can mount or guide to speed up and / or standardize a number of tasks.