Mini Moravian Bench Build Process
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Posted 12th July 2025
For the first couple of mortices, I decided to try two approaches and see which I preferred. For the first one, I attacked it with my biggest mortice chisel:
I kept going with that until I was about half-way down:
It was quite a bit easier than I expected it to be to be honest. The big chisel went through the Sycamore quite easily and, as I was cutting a pocket that's a lot wider than the chisel, it was quite easy to dig the removed wood out of the pocket. Mostly I did that with the chisel, but the pocket's big enough I can get my finger in there and that was helpful a few times.
Once I'd gone half-way through, I flipped it over and attacked it from the other side until I was all the way through on the straight portion.
You may notice in that photo that there are two knife lines on the right-hand side of the mortice. That's because I somehow mis-marked the location of the angle when I was marking up that mortice. The inner mark is the correct one, but the outer one will disappear when I open the hole up for the wedge, so it isn't really a problem.
Next, I chopped down the ends, following the angle (from the side pencil mark) by eye.
This photo makes it look like the angle's completely wrong, but that's just a photo oddity:
In the last two photos, you can see the two parallel angled pencil marks: the mistake and the correct one.
The last thing to do was to use my 18 mm chisel to pare the sides...
... leaving a lovely finish that will never be seen again:
For the second mortice, I got a 15 mm drill bit out:
A line of centre marks were added with an awl:
I could then clamp the board to the bench and drill parallel to the pencil marks, using the keyring to make sure I was drilling horizontally:
After going about half-way through (with the masking tape as reference), I flipped the board round and came in from the other side:
The ends got cleaned up with the mortice chisel...
... and then everything else was done with the 18 mm bevel-edge chisel:
With that, both of the mortices are done in the first leg:
As to which method I prefer... I'm not sure.
I didn't time either of them so I don't know which was quicker (I'd guess the drill, but the tidy-up and paring felt like it took quite a while). I quite enjoyed the mortice chisel and it was good practice so that's something, but then I don't do much hand-drilling, so that's probably good practice too!
I think what I'll probably do is repeat the exercise on the next leg (doing one with the mortice chisel and one with the drill) but with a stopwatch running so I can see which is actually quicker. It's probably better to time the second attempt as there will be less pondering and deciding how to go about things next time.
Having said that I'll time it, I won't necessarily choose the quicker one: if I decide I enjoyed one more than the other, then that one will win regardless of duration.
Page 13 of 17
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