Mortises - How Not to Do Them, Part 2
2009.09.28
Slightly Better Idea: Pilot Hole and Jigsaw
When I finally came back to the project, I decided to try yet another method. I bored a hole in the mortise area using a brace and bit. This is a 14-inch hand brace drill and I used a 3/4″ auger bit. This is surprisingly fast, but does take some muscle as you go down, and this was a through mortise so about 6″ deep. Also, I can’t steer a hand drill any better than I can steer a powered drill; the hole looks roughly centered side-to-side in the image below, but by the time the bit came out the bottom it was nearly over to the edge line. I then tried putting a forstner bit in the hand brace. Compared to using the powered drill, it was easier to make the forstner bit go down where I wanted, but hard work actually drilling down into the wood, even with the 3/4″ pilot hole. Very slow progress indeed. So I abandoned that pretty quickly, and turned to my jigsaw. It worked better than I expected, but the sides were still not as straight and smooth as I had hoped.
2009.09.29
I spent a couple days laying out all the remaining holes I needed to drill. It was a good plan to go through this with pencil, because I realized a couple mistakes along the way.
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