mortise and tenon

[Ken S]

I like Paul Sellers. His videos are very straight forward hand tool woodworking. I just found his mortise and tenon video.
Enjoy.
Ken

https://youtu.be/aBodzmUGtdw

[Herman Trivilino]

He makes it look easy, which indicates to me that he's practiced his trade well. The sign of a true craftsman.

When chiseling out the mortise he mentions that his chisel removes wood at a 30° angle, which I assume means his chisel is sharpened at 30°. This is appropriate angle for a chisel that's being hit with a mallet. I didn't notice if he switched to a different chisel for paring, because presumably he'd want a smaller angle of 20° or 25°, but I did see two chisels on his bench.

I also noticed that the chisels have mirror finish on the bevels, and just after 23 minutes into the video you can catch a reflection off his paring chisel bevel that shows it's been hollow ground.

[Ken S]

Very interesting observation, Herman. Paul's chisel sharpening video shows him using a board with several larger flat diamond "stones". Who knows?

Lie -Nielsen recommends a 30° bevel for their A2 steel chisels.  Mortise chisels usually use 35°. My guess is that sharp is more important than angle.

Your observation reminds me of a story told by Boyd Hutchison in a class twenty years are. Boyd has a doctorate in wood technology. Part of his class was examining wood cell structure with loupes. I was deginitely pedaling as fast as I could in Boyd's class. (I consider it the one "graduate level" class in my woodworking background.) Boyd told of working at the Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts. The woodshop was a large room with only hand tools. Visitors were duly impressed. After the visitors left, Boyd would open the door to the second room, a fully equipped power shop. Actually, I don,'t find this incongruous. Sister Tabatha, a Shaker woman, invented the circular saw blade and the Shakers embraced new technology.

I do recommend Paul Sellers' videos. He presents a lot of good traditional woodworking technique in an interesting manner.

Ken

[Muscleguy]

Nice video, the use of the router plane made me wonder who to use a Tormek, or any other wheel to sharpen a router plane blade. Consider that it is L-shaped except that it is not an absolute right angle, the underneath is a roughly 5degree angle from edge to heal for clearance.

I suppose you could shim it on the side of the wheel, but the need to do so would have to be major to bother considering the ease of sharpening it on a stone or scary sharp.

I've just hand cut 24 tenons and am halfway through the mortises. Pressure treated pine for a planter box. So I'm pretty well in practice. A rip cut tenon saw made cutting the tenons much better, faster and easier than the combi tooth saw last time.

[Ken S]

If I had to, I could probably sharpen the cutters on my router plane with my Tormek. It would not be my first choice. I would probably turn to a bench stone, diamond stone or file or my belt grinder first. The Tormek excels at sharpening some tools. It does a very credible job with many more. Some may be more logically sharpened using other methods.

I like Chris Schwarz' books, articles, blogs and videos. I believe tenon and dovetail saws rip sharpened are sadly underappreciated tools.

I recently handcut two dadoes for a belt grinder housing with chisels. An electric router might have been quicker, however, the chisel work was satisfying, a joy not to be missed.

Keep posting.

Ken