Mortising guides

 

Creating identically sized mortises

Some hand-woodworking tasks become a whole lot easier and more accurate when you use a simple guide to help steer the cutting action. A perfect case in point: mortising guides like these two. After you hog out most of the mortise waste at your drill press, these jigs guide your chisel straight down, helping you pare the walls square to the faces and ends of the workpiece. You'll create identically sized mortises and save yourself a lot of time fine-tuning individual tenons.