Holtzapffel Workbench #1

I tried doing one mortise completely by hand – it was a real pain. Thankfully I have a drill press and fostner bit that I’ll be using for the rest of these. I’ll go that route and see how it works out. This mortise was my first one ever and it took me over an hour to chop. It didn’t turn out too bad, but I need a faster way. I’ve got 7 more to go for the base.

-- Mark

Looking good ,good progress

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon

Mark, my angle on this is; you need to know how to do it with hand tools, then you’ll know better how to do it with power tools. It’s always good to keep your skills honed. I try to incorporate some hand work into each of the projects that I do. Looks like you did a very nice job on this joint. Keep up the good work.
PS a tenon jig is cheaper than a dado stack and it makes better tenons.

-- Tim -- http://tmuli.com

I’m impressed with that mortise for being your first, I’m looking forward to more progress on the bench.

-- Finding satisfaction in creation

I’ll second Tim, by doing things with handtools you learn the important aspects of each technique/joinery. once you truly understand the basics, you’ll know better how to incorporate powertools properly to help you achieve similar results but at a faster rate. (ask me how I know…)

-- When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

Your hand cut mortise & tenon look better than the machine cut I did.

-- masrol, kuala lumpur, MY.

Looks pretty good. You’ll be able to look back many years from now and say ” I cut those by hand”.

-- KCkevin

Don’t know how you could improve on that! Nice work Mark!

-- spanky46 -- Never enough clamps...Never enough tools...Never enough time.

I’ll second what tenontim said.

-- Kent Shepherd * The goal is-----More Tools!