In the realm of woodworking, a mortiser comes into play when it comes to making square or rectangular holes in a piece of wood.

Introduced into the world of woodworking in 1874 by Robert and Ralph Greenlee, a mortiser, or morticer in commonwealth English, is a specialized woodworking tool geared in the creation of mortise and tenon joints.

Upon its siring in 1874, the hollow chisel mortiser was somewhat as big as a table saw. The tool was a combination between a four sided chisel and a boring rotating bit, which produced the square edged holes in a piece of wood. The hollow chisel mortiser was instantly seen as a tool of necessity for woodworkers, as it made making mortises and tenon joints fast, accurate and easy.

Today, a variety of mortisers can be found, each with their own specific boring capabilities.

The square chisel mortiser is pretty much what was called the hollow chisel mortiser. It is practically similar to a drill press, as it is a combination of drill and chisel. As the drill bit clears out the material to be removed, the chisel keeps the edges straight and clean, making a square hole in the woodpiece. A square chisel mortiser can be commonly found in a professional woodworker’s shop because if it’s specialized nature of woodwork output. Though cheaper and smaller square chiel mortisers are available in the market, a lot of amateur woodworkers wouldn’t be able to justifiably make use of this tool, considering it’s high maintenance cost, as well as the space it’d take up in a woodshop.

A relatively recent innovation of the square chisel mortiser would be the horizontal mortiser. With a horizontal mortiser, floating tenons, or loose tenons, are easy to make. A floating tenon is made when both pieces of wood in question have mortises cut into them, as another piece of wood is formed into a tenon and fitted into the square holes, thus completing the union of woodpieces. A horizontal mortiser makes the making of floating tenons less tedious, if not non-tedious.

A chain mortiser is another type if mortiser. When it comes to cutting large mortises, a chain mortiser would be the right tool. The Makita 7104L is perhaps the most popular of chain mortisers, and is usually used in timber frame construction. Large mortises indeed, a chain mortiser works with a chainsaw like cutter, rotating within an allowed area. As the cutters are rotating, the setup is plunged into the workpiece, mortising out the unwanted volume in the wood.

Indeed the hollow chisel mortiser has gone far since its birth. But even with it’s evolution from then to now, the purpose they serve hasn’t. As long as mortises are needed, there’ll always be a place for mortisers in a woodworker’s woodshop.