 tips, tricks, and techniques for using the Powermatic Benchtop Mortising Machine. This is the Powermatic number 701. Hola woodworkers, Paul Carson here, a small workshop guide. There's a lot of good videos about reviewing this machine and how to set it up, but I've used it for quite a while now and as you use a machine you tend to learn some of the things that you want to do with it in order to get better performance. Let's review the features really, really quickly. First of all is Benchtop, so probably want to build yourself a cabinet and then have a drawer with all of your supplies for it. Now I bought a whole bunch of different chisels. Turns out I didn't need to do that. I spent a lot of extra money. I only used a half inch chisel. I'm sure there'll be some application in the future when I put on a smaller one, but normally you're taking out a hole that's bigger and so the biggest one you get half inch is the largest I could find. All right, so that's the first thing. Don't spend a lot of money on a variety of sizes, if anything, buy a couple of different half inch and that way you can keep them sharper. When you go to install the chisel, there's a technique for that and this door opens here and actually swing over if you have a half inch chisel, one of the two swing arms. And then when you push both units up, they come up against that swing arm. Then you lock down the internal bit. You then swing the arm out of the way and push the square chisel further up. That will end up producing the bit, being a little bit below the cutting edges of the square chisel. All right, so the arm is adjustable. You can even move it to the other side if you're left handed. It's got a stop block on it, so you can raise that up and down just by unscrewing a knob here, lowering it and so forth. Obviously you want to pull it down and see where you need your chisel to stop. And again, I've got clearance here. And then set the stop block so it can get to that point. It comes with a piece that fits over a threaded bolt here and you can raise and lower that. You can even take it off and turn it upside down depending on how thick the piece is that you're trying to go through. And it has its limitations. Limitations of the machine, I would say, don't expect this to be your super, super precise mortise because I think you're going to be disappointed. It's very difficult to adjust everything to get when you're talking about a half an inch chisel, just like when you're hand chiseling. If you use a little quarter inch or a half an inch chisel and you try to do a bunch of walls, you're going to have trouble lining that up because you're using that small width of chisel. And so getting it lined up all the way along the line is difficult. That's true with a hand chisel. So it's also true here. I would tend, if you're working with real hardwood, to use this to get inside of the line that you want to get to and then use your hand chisel to get the rest of the way to that line. And when I'm doing plywood, I don't want to use my hand chisels very much if at all because they'll tear them up. Number one, number two, plywood doesn't chisel worth a damn. And so in this case, I'm going to try to go more precisely to my line with this bench top mortiser rather than using chiseling. So I've indicated on my workpiece that I want to go to the outside of this line, outside of this line, in the middle of this line, in the middle of this line. Actually, in this particular application, I'm going to put two more layers on the bottom of this. So I'm going all the way through. I'd rather do that than put it all together first and then have a wider piece, which may not be accommodated by my... There's some limitations here for these little bench top mortising devices. So work with thin enough pieces that you've got the range that you need to get as far as you need to get in that piece. All right, the next thing I do is my eyes aren't very good. So I just have a little sewing machine light that's magnetized. It is really magnetized. So it's just electrical. In this case, you can find battery operated ones. I'm running power tools here, so electrical is not a problem. So I just put that on the metal here, and I set it so that I can see very well down where I'm working. All right, so supplemental light might be good, depending on how much light you have. I've got my shop vac set up behind the machine, and what I've done is use this little Rockler supplemental hose on my shop vac hose because this is very, very flexible, and I can move it pretty much anywhere. The idea is to have it sucking pretty good right near where the debris is going to be, and then that will pick up a lot of that debris. Otherwise, you're going to have to have a good lung power and blow stuff out of the way all the time. Let me talk about a couple more things. It does come with a hole here, and that's obviously to protect your chisel, but you don't want to plunge through, in this case it wouldn't matter, because I'm going to put another layer underneath this work piece. But you generally just rule of consistency is you don't want to plunge right through a piece and have tear out on the bottom. So you normally want a sacrificial piece underneath. Now this particular one, here's a tip. You'd like to hold the piece using these rollers up against your fence, and if you use a sacrificial piece that is wider than your work piece, then your rollers aren't going to be able to press against your work. Because this is threaded, it's very difficult to get this to raise up. You actually kind of need to get in and behind it and raise up near the bar. If you try to get it up or down by pulling on these posts here, you're going to get very frustrated. So it has to clear of all of those ridges on there. So get your finger underneath it back near the bar, and then that will work better, believe me. I have struggled with it and struggled. I didn't talk about setting your chisel up to be square. So let's review that for a second. So I've got a nice square piece of wood. Then you bring this down, move your fence forward until it hits that. So you're going to release this, and that allows you to swivel the chisel back and forth, and then turn it back and forth. Again, probably want to lock down there. So turn it back and forth until you fill it square against that piece. Otherwise, you're going to stair step as you do your plunges. If you do start doing your plunges and you find your stair stepping, then you do need to make an adjustment. Probably want the open part of the square chisel pointing to the left. That way, as I plunge from left to right, each time I, after the first one that I plunge, there'll be an opening for my debris. Keep the chisel sharp. This device comes with little stones, and they grind the inside of that. I put this in my drill driver, so I can get it to turn faster, and then I get my chisel and a vice, and then I try to make sure I'm very 90 degrees, and I use some fluid, some lapping fluid, and I let it spin inside of that chisel. Then I take the sides of the chisel and rub them against my 12,000 grit diamond stone. I just have a habit of sharpening that after each use. That way, it's going to work much better next time I want to use it. All right, let me loosen these up and let me get a line to my back line. Bring my chisel down. I have indicated I want to kind of be in the middle of that line. Put on my glasses. These are prescription glasses, so I can see. That's why this lighting is pretty critical. Make sure I'm not looking at shadows. I'm pretty happy with where that is there, and I'm pretty happy with this orientation left and right. Lock these down, and we're pretty well ready to plunge. This is far enough forward that I can't really get these to engage, at least not fully. They'll probably drop off here. So I can't rely on these to hold my piece this way. They're pretty good, but they're only hanging on by a thread there. So we're going to plunge now. One thing I did not discuss is your sacrificial piece. I said it shouldn't be wider than your work piece. The other thing is I was using some three-quarter inch sacrificial boards in here, and all that happened was that raised my work piece enough that these rubber guides went underneath my work piece and were just pressing against the sacrificial piece, and they're designed to press against your work piece. So use a half inch or a quarter inch. I keep a whole bunch of sacrificial boards just nearby. There's no reason that that wouldn't support and avoid tear out, so that might even be better than the half inch. As you move across here, if you see that you've got less than two widths, so less than an inch left, let's say I have three-quarters of an inch. So if I plunge down for the first half inch there, that's going to leave me a quarter of an inch on the edge. The chisel then, when I plunge over at the edge, may skew into the opening because there's no support there. So when you're getting close to the edge, use your chisel at the edge and then come back and get the little quarter inch or whatever that's left over piece because there I don't care if his skew is left or right, but this wall is super important to me. All right, let's see. There was something else. You can keep adjusting this fence backwards like this to get to this front part and get it down in here. But let me see if I can demonstrate to you what happens if you use that approach and have the chisel pretty far outside of these two support guides. I think I'm pretty well set up here. I want all of this line. I want the middle of this line. That all looks good. I got it locked down. Got my vacuum here. So let's go. This was far enough away from my vacuum head that I didn't get really good clearance of the chip, so that's going to be another reason for the tip I'm just going to give you. But here's what happens when this is outside of here unless you've got this really, really locked down tight and you try to get this back out of the workpiece. This raises up because it's not supported out here. So it raises up and the chisel gets caught at an angle and you can't get it out. You're going to find yourself that situation sometime where you say, what in the world? Why won't that come out? And it's because of some bunching that's going on. So I'll show you how to avoid that. First, let me get it out of there. When I get myself in this position through not remembering that there's a problem, then I generally go to... So again, when you plunge out away from this brace and then you try to get it back up, it can be very difficult, particularly if it's thick. How do you avoid that? What you want to do instead of pulling this fence further and further back to get out to this point here is you want to turn it around and do it where this is more underneath this support device. I actually broke one of my arms off by pulling up so hard and banging down and had to order a replacement part. So that's when I finally realized I must be doing something wrong and so turn your piece around and stay more underneath this support. Well, you saw how difficult it was to get that back out of there, particularly on the first cut, where it's surrounded by wood on all sides. A lot of friction there, very difficult to pull it out. You don't want it leveraging and getting at an angle and then being even more difficult. So turn the wood around like this and then on this back row here, against this edge, plunge where you're underneath. Let's demonstrate that. Now it will come up and out of there because the piece is not coming at an angle. So it comes up and takes a little bit of force, but it's much easier. That alone is worth your time of watching this video. I love the machine. It's not for doing super, super precise, but that, of course, depends on how much time you spend setting it up and marking your materials and then making sure that the square edge of the chisel hits exactly where you want it to. Use these rollers. Keep your plunging underneath the bars. Don't get out here on the edge of the workpiece. And what else? I think that about covers it. Great machine, keep your chisel sharp, and life will be good. So that, I'm probably talking to... I love this thing so much. I talk to it all the time when I'm on camera, instead of to you guys, but you'll have to forgive me. Oh, my baby. I do recommend this machine. Of course, I haven't tried any others, but it certainly has worked for me. Hey, before I go, do me a favor. This old guy needs some help. Could you give me a like? Could you subscribe to my channel and give me some comments and make sure you hit that notification bell. Small workshop guy, sighting off.