DIY BARN BUILD E22: CHAIN MORTISER COMES TO THE RESCUE – CUTTING MORTICES IN OAK IS HARD



The oak frame continues and I work out how to cut mortices – not as easy as I thought, until of course I got hold of the right tool for the job…

FYI: Alex embarks on ambitious building projects. Whereas most builders rely on proven skills and experience, Alex prefers a potentially calamatous combination of optimism and youtube-based research.

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20 thoughts on “DIY BARN BUILD E22: CHAIN MORTISER COMES TO THE RESCUE – CUTTING MORTICES IN OAK IS HARD”

  1. Great to see another episode; you're really making great strides here. I have so much respect for you taking this project on and love seeing how it's all coming together. Excited for more joinery! Ed from Bismarck, North Dakota, USA.

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  2. Oh dear Alex – you are making things hard for yourself. I'm loving watching the series but I do cringe a little when I see some of the problems you make for yourself….
    Buy some decent tools. You need a good half inch router, a quarter inch Bosch green just isn't good enough for working with oak like this. Cheap router and drill bits won't do the job either. Personally I like Titman bits – not cheap but will deal with this stuff easily. Wood Owl drill bits are great and get a decent carpenters slick for cleaning up the tenon cheeks etc. Plane your timber square first before you cut the joints and you won't end up with twists. It also means that when you mark out your joints on either side of the timber the cuts will line up. You don't need to buy a £1500 makita beam planer to do it – Triton do one that does the job for a quarter of that price.
    You're doing a great job – but please please buy some quality tools!

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  3. Another enjoyable update, Alex. Great to see more progress and I love that you rise to each challenge with such a good attitude. Not ashamed to show the cock-ups either. Should have the whole thing finished by August. 😉
    All the very best, Roy.

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  4. Nice work! And I like that you showed the process even the mistake… Hi from St-Denis-Sur-Richelieu on the south shore of Montreal in Canada 👍🏻✌🏻🇨🇦

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  5. I'm not sure yet that I'm ready for such a massive undertaking, but you've inspired me to do little bits around the house that I might not have tried other wise. Thanks for the videos from Berkeley Township, New Jersey, US.

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  6. Hiya from Stockholm- Regarding the chipout, you could turn the machine around at the end to always be cutting downwards. Basically, start one step in, work your way through cutting downwards. Go back with the machine facing the other way and cut out the last piece – cutting downwards. But what do I know, I use computers all day…

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  7. Alex, your router is too small. The one you were looking at was a 1/2”. Yours is a 1/4”. The demonstration showed using a template with many mortise positions. This would enable you to take small cuts by lowering the depth of the tool in each pocket. Even so, I don’t think you would be able to cut mortises as deep as you need with a router. Oak is very hard. When you tried drilling, your drill speed was too fast, that’s why the drill bits were hot. The black stuff is tannin from the oak. It will stain all your tools if you don’t clean them. But you got there in the end. Impressive work as usual. Keep up the good work 😊

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