The Door Construction Continues, Mortises

Now to cut the mortises. I have a table top mortiser that works real well for this if you have good chisels. The spur of the bit on the first chisel I had was ground off center making the bit rattle inside the chisel and producing a terrible cut. Once that was replaced with a higher quality mortise chisel and bit things went much smoother. Note test piece in machine. I'll use this later to line up the dado head with the mortise.

I scribed a center line on the test piece and set the chisel up from that point. Make sure to set the chisel square to the fence. I check this again if I make any back and forth adjustments to the fence. The bit should be about 1/32" lower than the chisel.

After punching all the mortises I then set up the table saw with a dado stack to run the grooves for the panels.

It took a little fussing around to get the groove and the mortises in line but this needs to be exact or there will be problems down the road.

Here is the set up at the table saw. Note the feather boards fore and aft. I didn't want any drift in the groove.

Completed groove with mortise.

Next, it's tenon time!