Mortises

The benchtop mortiser: a little fiddly to set up, but it makes square holes pretty quickly thereafter. The mortises in these legs are off-center, so you can only do half of them with one set-up. Note in this pic, the stop block is clamped on the right side of the fence. Half the job had the stop block clamped on the left side.

A mortise after a little hasty cleaning up with a chisel. They are never visible in the finished product, so I don't waste a whole lot time making them beautiful.


The off-center mortises on two sides of each leg (before cleaning up by hand). The tapers are cut on the same side as the mortises, so you have to pay attention: a common "oops" is to mortise one (or more) legs on the wrong side. Been there, done that.