Plane mortising machinery

Hi all, first post here. In a past life I was a machinist, but these days I'm a maker of wooden planes. I'm looking for some design help here.

I'd like to devise some tooling for mortising my planes. Right now, I drill a few holes and then mortise out most of the waste with chisels, then finish with floats. So 95% of the work is done by hand. And I'm fine with that, but some day I'll be old, and I don't want to be pounding out all those mortises when I'm 70. And I wouldn't mind speeding things up as well.

The only machinery I've ever seen for this was devised by George Wilson, who is probably familiar to most here. There's a great video on the Fine Woodworking mag site, but it's paywalled. I took to a couple screenshots to illustrate.

George used a slotting head on a Bridgeport to make a big chisel go up and down.



He also had a saw that works a bit like a broach to cut away the abutments.



Unfortunately, a mill is out of the question for me. I don't have the space, the money, or even 220 v in my rental space. But what I'm thinking is, I don't need one, and I don't even need a motor. I just need something that can make a chisel-like cutter go up and down, with no play, and a handle that will multiply my force. Like on an arbor press, or an old manual metal shaper (that's how I got the idea). Then I need an xy-table beneath the cutter, with a mill vise mounted to it. I crank the handles on the table, make a cut, rinse and repeat.

I'm considering a couple options. One would be to modify a big arbor press. I'd probably need a 5-ton to have enough space. My main concern is taking all the play out of the press; another concern is how I'd mount my cutter, given that the rack is probably hardened.

Another option would be to fabricate a mechanism from linear rod, bushings, etc. Not sure if that would be better or worse.

I'd love to hear opinions on these options, or other suggestions if you've got em. I bet someone has a better idea than mine. Thanks in advance!

In the 19th. C.,they used hand mortising machines to efficiently and accurately cut mortises. Roy Underhill used one once on "The Woodwright's Show". It had a long lever which multiplied the force you put on the chisel. I saw some chisels for one of these at a flea market some time ago. But only once,as I recall.

If you had one of these type devices,you could work pretty quickly. I'd stay away from a hydraulic arbor press,as it would be exceedingly slow to get anything done with one. A hand powered simple one with a rack and pinion drive might work very well. But,you'd have to make means to move the plane about to mortise it. There might not be enough overhead room. Perhaps on a large size one.

We had to make the chisels and saw for our setup. They worked very well,even with a 1/3 H.P. motor on the slotting head. It was geared down to give plenty of power on the strokes. Besides,I wanted to be careful to not break off the place on the end of the mill's ram where the slotter is mounted.

That coarse toothed saw cut quite smoothly,being held rigidly by the slotter. The big teeth provided plenty of room for chips to curl up in as it was moved sideways. The saw was made from D2. The chisels from 01. They worked very well,and gave the plane's mortises the appearance of being hand cut,rather than having swirly marks that a router would have left. Besides,no room for a router down in the plane's throat.

We started by holding the plane blanks upside down,and used a long router bit to cut down far enough in the throat of the plane to just clear the wear of the plane. Those chips have to have somewhere to go! If not,the slotter just stalled out. With the milling machine,we were able to have the router cuts and the slotter cuts mate up flawlessly. We took JUST ERNOUGH of a final cut to pare away the marks left by the router bit.

We did not even bother to make any jigs to lay the planes in. Just pencil lines on the sides of the planes,drawn with a template,and the use of a square on the sides of the planes was quite enough,and very quickly set up.

In one setting,we made 80 bench planes,and many other special planes. Even long cooper's jointers were accomplished. We also made some large crown molding planes with 6" wide irons for the Housewrights.

I once had a powermatic model 10 mortiser which I sold and hate that I did. From memory I think the table could be tilted at an angle. Not 100% sure on this but I think it would. Then it had y axis adjustment that could be used to widen the slot. Maybe this? Very nice machines. The nice thing here is that it has a nice adjustable table. I think using an arbor press will be tough since you will need to make a way to hold and move your part.

The first mechanical mortise machines were "stomp" mortisers with heavy straight chisels much like the pig-sticker style hand mortise chisels, but with a shank to fit the machine ram. They still exist in Canada, I have seen several in flea-markets on backroads and out of the way places there. Probably in Maine, too.

With a shaper, I do some slotter work on the infill planes i make, to clean up the throat and bed; and have made some specialty tools to do so.

Your best bet would be to acquire a 6" or larger slotter and make a few custom tools or holders. A slotter has a built in rotary table, and X & Y travels with leadscrews and dial collars to keep track. The rotary table has T-slots, so it is trivial to make and mount an angle plate to it. Either fixed angle, or screw tilt type.

On a shaper, the tool on the right is one made to slot out metal plane throats, so the cutting tip is not very acute. However, is could certainly be re-sharpened to be so, for wood. The tool could also be wider if desired.



Another way to hold chisels in a shaper would be to make them with a solid round shank, and hold them in a collet chuck such as this:





Again, the tool itself could be made single edged with cutting angles and clearance appropriate for wood.

The large, deep swivel vise on a shaper would accomodate angle plates and such, even fastened in. The table has X & the toolslide provides Y axes.

I think your idea of using a 3 ton or larger arbor press could work, but it would not be as rigid as a shaper. The rams are gibbed, so play can be taken out or at least reduces. The rams are soft, at least on the imports. I drilled & bored mine end-wise and put a setscrew cross-wise, to accommodate round shank tooling such as punches & dome rivet sets. Or you could even thread the end of the ram internal or external as necessary, or taper bore it, and put an ER collet chuck on.

AS someone else mentioned, it might even be convenient to just get a hollow chisel mortiser with built in tilt and X-Y table, put a brake on the spindle, and use it by hand with straight mortise chisels made with shanks to fit the regular socket.

smt

Maybee a MaKa oscillating mortiser? Or is the slot too small for such a machine

The pictured one below is not mine but I have the exact same model; mine is in pieces because I had to take it apart to transport it in my toyota camry





Video on how it works. The one you see in the video has manual downfeed while mine is pneumatic like the above pictured.

Maka M6 mortiser - YouTube

Many of the floor standing hollow chisel mortisers have a table or head tilt and are sufficiently beefy to hold and guide a flat chisel in a paring cut in hardwood- I'd suggest a custom made chisel for the finishing cuts and the hollow type to remove the bulk of the material.

Greenwud said:

Many of the floor standing hollow chisel mortisers have a table or head tilt and are sufficiently beefy to hold and guide a flat chisel in a paring cut in hardwood- I'd suggest a custom made chisel for the finishing cuts and the hollow type to remove the bulk of the material.

Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing. Mine does have a tilting head and stops on the "X" and "Y" axes.

Thanks very much for the replies, everyone. I'm encouraged that some of you think that an arbor press might be a workable option. I think that bolting a small xy table to the press, perhaps combined with a two-piece mill vise, might be the cheapest way to go ( a 5-ton press from the Grizz is less than $500).

A large freestanding mortiser might also work...I had sort of discounted that option, but several of you make good points about that. I'm not crazy about getting a motorized machine when I don't need a motor, but it's probably the option that involves the least work.

I don't need to do this right away, so I'll keep my eyes open and see if I can get a good deal on either a mortiser or a big press.

Thanks again, all.

I am sure that you realize a mortising machine will not go very far down into the plane's escapement. Just to the top of the wear.

A Japanese plane maker's machine. He also has a mouth cutting machine which looks like a 2-axis lever press with blades mounted on each axis. I have a picture of it on my camera but left the data cord at my shop so posting it up will have to wait.

The plane mouth mortise clean up machine:




The mortising machine in action:

gwilson said:

I am sure that you realize a mortising machine will not go very far down into the plane's escapement. Just to the top of the wear.

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George, thanks, I do realize that…if I used a mortising machine, I would have to fabricate (or have someone else fabricate) a solid chisel, with no drill bit, that could be swapped in.

Chris,

Thank you very much for the pictures, they give me some good ideas. In the 1st pic in post #11, the way the cutter is mounted is almost exactly how I was imagining the modification to an arbor press.

May I ask where you found the pics, and if there are more, either your own or online?

At this point, I am seriously considering taking a 1 or 2 ton cheapo arbor press and cutting the front half of the base off. Then mount it on a platform, with an xy table directly below. Mount an adjustable angle plate to the xy table, and bolt a two-piece mill vise to the angle plate. Mount the cutter to the press ram as described above. If you (or anyone else) has an opinion on that, I would love to hear it. Thanks again!

- Steve

Those pics are in a book I own. You won't find them on the web.

Chris Hall said:

Those pics are in a book I own. You won't find them on the web.

Click to expand...

Well at least temporarily you can...:-)
Joe

You are quite correct.