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Drill press morticing attachments

4K views 23 replies 17 participants last post by  johnthebiker 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Do they work well?

Are they frustrating to deal with?

I don't really have room for a dedicated morticing machine….
 
#3 ·
I have one that you can have. I have used it once in ten years. I have a bench top drill press and My table won't go low enough to get the 3/8th bit in the quill and still have room for the wood and the 1/4 in bit was just a real pain to set up and use. I found that a good forstner bit and a sharp chisel was as almost as quick. send me a PM.
 
#5 ·
I would avoid the use of it…but that's just my personal opinion. There are people who may have better advice that are much more experienced than I am.

But here are two of my reasons:

-They take awhile to set up on your drill press to get them working properly
-Its tough on you and your drill press to sink the hollow chisels into your stock.

I'm not saying you need to go out and buy a dedicated mortiser (I did because $400 was burning a hole in my pocket) but if you really want to make square mortises, I have to agree with HamS advice.
 
#6 ·
If you do a lot of mortises you are far ahead either finding a good used morticing machine or you might look at the Wood River MM at Woodcraft. It is a twin to the Steel City MM but much less $$$. I caught it on a good sale ($199) when Woodcraft first introduced it.

The drill press tools are a joke.

The alternative would be to make a jig and cut them with a router. You would still have to chisel the ends square though.
 
#8 ·
Just to be on the other side of the fence, I have one that I use all the time. But it is set up on a dedicated drill press. I like the drill press because you can do thicker and/or longer boards, and at an angle. Of course I would probably trade it for the General tilting mortiser, if I ever have $800 burning a hole in my pocket.
 
#9 · (Edited by Moderator)
Tim:

That would be the one advantage of owning a mortising attachment….if you had two d.ps, and like you say, keep one dedicated just for the attachment….otherwise, you'll spend more time setting and tearing down than you will actually using the thing…..Several years ago, I tore mine down, put it back in the box, and bought a bench top mortiser…I haven't looked back since….I would like to get a floor model, but right now I see no advantage to it over the bench type…...
 
#11 ·
Ask Tom Hintz at NewWoodworker.com what he thinks of them! I think he said once that he has three of them … all of them are somewhere out in the woods behind his house!

-Gerry
 
#12 ·
That's not a bad idea, Gerry…...? I should do the same thing since I have plenty of woods on my place. That piece of crap is just taking up space in my drill cabinet…...:). I could use that space to buy another worthless piece of crap I would probably never use…...lol.
 
#13 ·
Whoa! Drill press mortising attachment??!? Do you want a migraine and less money????

Look at even a bench top mortiser and the handle it has on it. Now look at the big rack and pinion gears that operate the plunge. Now look at the piny handle on your DP and the tiny little rack and pinion teeth it has.

See the difference? The mortiser is built to take the punishment of shoving a 1/2" square chisel into hard maple, where your drill press is made to push a sharp spinning drill bit into wood and metal, which requires a LOT less force than the chisel will.

If you don't believe me, take a 1/2" mortise chisel and try to shove it into a 1/2" hole in a piece of maple. Take it to your DP and try to use the quill to push it in. It's basically going to require that much force with the mortising attachment too. Well, a little less, but you get my point.

Drill presses are made to drill, mortisers are made to cut mortises. They can both be used for the other purpose, but neither is going to do really well.

A MUCH better solution is to make a horizontal router table like this unit from WoodHaven.com

And then either buy their mortising attachment
Or make your own mortising attachment.

And better still would be their 6010HD Mortising Table, which basically turns a horizontal router table into a multi-router of sorts.

I have a shop-made horizontal router table with a mortising attachment I made, and it works awesome. Super fast and easy. Mine is similar to the basic design from WoodHaven. But I'm planning to build another table using aluminum extrusions from 80-20.com and then make my own X-Y axis mortising table using heavy-duty ball-bearing drawer slides.

Their is simply no equal when it comes to the speed of a slot mortiser, which is why pros will spend thousands on a multi-router.
It makes loose tenon joinery so fast and easy you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. And if you want to use standard tenons cut into the workpiece, it's as easy as rasping round corners on the tenons or chiseling the mortises square, which only takes about a minute of paring per mortise.
 
#18 ·
I went through the same issue. I figured I would save space and buy the drill press attachment. It turns out that the Delta mortising attachment did not fit my new 17 1/2" Delta drill press. The drill press was too new. When I called I heard the setup I needed to do. I am at a place in my life where time is important and valuable and that setting this up each and everytime I needed to mortise something did nto fit. I felt that I would be just cutting the mortises by hand to save the effort.

I bought the machine. It was the best move. You can get them for not much more money than the attachment and the time you save will be invaluable. Also, if you are like me, you would probably upgrade in a couple of years anyway so just upgrade now.
 
#23 ·
I see two (well at least two common forums running here, interestingly enough they all seem to lean away from mortising attachments as opposed to dedicated mortising machines.

From the experiments I conducted I can produce the same result from my router and extender(if required) and then my corner chisel if using small depth stock.

However when it comes to deep repeatable mortises I see the mortising machine wins hands down.

I will keep my 3 mortising bits and if I purchase a mortising machine I hope they will fit.
 
#24 ·
I bought the Delta model with the 4 chisels. My project I used it for was a maple table with 8 mortised joints. I use it on a floor model drill press so I had extra room for height adjustments possible

Once setup is done, it is relatively quick to use. It did need a work to with a mortise chisel by hand to deppen and square up the holes but worked well enoigh for someone who expects to only do a few a year or less.
 
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