Square Mortising Chisels

I've been doing that for a while now. Quite handy.

Square holes for pegs.jpg

I just too a scrap of padouk, drilled an appropriate hole in it and smoothed it so it was comfortable to hold.
 
Interesting... although I'm unconvinced about how useful it would be in practice...

There are some others out there that are similar:
http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=30011&cat=1,41504,41541&ap=1

The more traditional looking "corner chisel" setup without the fancy alignment aids is somewhat widely used:

http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=44837&cat=1,41504,41541&ap=1
https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4175/corner-chisels
http://www.mlcswoodworking.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/smarthtml/pages/cornchis.html

I think that the L type corner chisel would be more flexible and easy to use without having it go askew... I have a hard enough time keeping machine mortises square with a fence :D For hand mortises I pare the sides anyway (and think you'd want to with the peachtree ones). I haven't tried using a corner chisel though so not actually sure how much easier it would be than just using a bench or mortise chisel like I currently do (although I've seen some videos of it in use haven't felt compelled to drop the change on it). It does seem like it might be a fair easier to get a crisp corner with one...

Apparently others also sell a hand held version of the square hole punch as well although its a bit stubbier so you couldn't go to deep... appears to be mostly for cutting G&G type plug holes.
http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=65380&cat=1,41504,41541&ap=1
 
Glenn, Out of curiousity... I'm wondering how you use it - mostly as a corner chisel or have you cleaned out whole pre-drilled mortises with it? (besides - I'm guessing using it for your G&G buttons?).
 
Glenn, Out of curiousity... I'm wondering how you use it - mostly as a corner chisel or have you cleaned out whole pre-drilled mortises with it? (besides - I'm guessing using it for your G&G buttons?).

The mortiser-chisel-in-handle is exclusively for G&G square pegs for me. I pre-drill to give the chiseled material somewhere to go and then square-up with the mortise chisel. Mortiser chisels come in several sizes and have different sized shanks. I bought a 1/4", 5/16" and 3/8" all with the same shank size so they all fit my amazingly sophisticated 'handle' :D. Since I use them by hand, I bought inexpensive ones. I hone them before I put them away after use so they are ready to go when I next need them. Well, most of the time anyway . . .
 
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Thanks Glenn, makes a lot of sense for that use case.

I'm still unconvinced that it would be a good solution for mortices but I've certainly been wrong lots before :D
 
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