Shop Update for 11/11/16: The Mortise Block

A Simple Appliance to Make Better Mortises

This week I’ve been chopping some mortises and I posted a picture to Instagram that got some questions and a lot of interest. My mortise block is a simple bench appliance that I picked up from a Charles Hayward book that gives you a quick way to hold your workpiece directly over top of the leg of your bench while mortising. This is one of those silly little jigs that has been around for years that people forget about and often slap their foreheads when they see it in use.