How To Sharpen Mortising Chisel Drill Bits With A Durable Find From Amazon

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Nails and screws are a quick way to fix two pieces of wood together, but if you want something that looks good and offers tremendous strength, it's hard to beat traditional woodworking joints. One of the most popular and versatile of these is the mortise and tenon, used for everything from furniture to house frames. With this joint, a tongue, or tenon, fits tightly into a hole, or mortise. Originally, the mortise was painstakingly carved out by hand with a chisel, but a mortising chisel speeds things up considerably. Of course, any drill or chisel goes blunt eventually. But, today, there are tools like the Scottchen Pro Mortise Bit Sharpening Tool (currently available from Amazon for $9.99) that can quickly restore a mortising chisel's edge.

There are lots of useful tips for sharpening drill bits so that they're good as new, but the unique construction of a mortising chisel means those can only do half the job, as there are two parts to its function. First is a round drill bit called an auger. This part can be sharpened in the usual way, on a bench grinder, for example. The other part is the hollow mortising chisel, which is square and has sculpted cutting edges on the bottom. It's the inside of these edges that need to be sharpened, and where the conical shape of the Scottchen Pro bit comes into the picture. The sharpening bit fits into any cordless drill and is diamond-coated in 220 and 600 grit; it's designed to restore the edge to chisels up to one-half inch across.

As of this writing, the Scottchen Pro Mortise Bit Sharpening Tool has a 4.4-star rating (out of five stars), from over 165 reviews. Reviewers comment on the bit's quality and its value for the price. One four-star review, for example, shared, "I don't know how I would have sharpened my chisels without it." Complaints are rare, although one buyer, who gave the product one star, said that the coating came off. In total, 70% of customers give the bit five stars, while another 16% give it four, and 6% give the product one or two stars.

Mortising chisels may not be something you'll find on every list of tools worth investing in to start woodworking at home, but they are particularly efficient at cutting the square or rectangular holes used in several types of mortise-and-tenon joints. The central auger removes most of the waste, then the sharp chisel portion trims away the edges, leaving perfectly straight sides important for accurate woodworking. To cut a rectangular hole, you simply move the material to the left or right in two or more steps.

In pro shops, you might find a stand-alone mortising machine. But the affordable alternative for hobbyists is a pillar drill attachment for a drill press. These attachments typically cost under a hundred bucks and comprise a base unit with three or four different-sized chisels. If you want to up your joinery game, or you're going to build or refurbish old wooden furniture and need to make new parts, it's definitely a tool to consider adding to your collection.