Bathroom Vanity Mirror #5: Chopping Mortises

Tonight I finished off my mortises. I have been away from the project for quite a while and watched one of David Charlesworths’ DVD’s from Lie-Nielsen in the downtime. The DVD was about working with chisels and he chops a mortise in there somewhere. After watching the video I tweaked my approach a little and it helped immensley. The first mortise I did took about 40 min. Some in the middle were a little quicker. Tonight I got a more accurate job and it took about fifteen minutes to chop a 1/4” by 3” mortise 1 1/4” deep. The biggest tips I gained from were standing in line with the mortise instead of accross from it. This makes it much easier to keep straight while chopping. I think with some more practise and a sharpened chisel (I need to hone a steeper angle on the chisel) I could get this done quicker and more accurateley yet. For anyone out there wanting to learn to use chisels better the video is really good.

-- Mike, Western New York