Slot morticer advantages?

[thatsnotafestool]

Can anyone please tell me what the benefits of a slot morticer would be over the more traditional vertical morticer?

Any disadvantages?

Reason for asking is that I know of a Kity one for sale for £99+VAT and it looked a 'useful' bit of kit but could be a waste of money as far as I know.

Thanks

[mailee]

A slot morticer is much quicker than the overhead morticer. It does produce mortices with rounded ends though.

[thatsnotafestool]

Ah..OK..thanks. I must be missing something then. Does it mean that you don't put the normal mortice chisels in?

[Alf]

You use a spiral kinda bit, I think. Sort of router-ish, but not. The experts will expound, I don't doubt.

[engineerone]

imagine it like a big domino ;D ;D

without of course the floating dominos that are now available.

paul

[thatsnotafestool]

pizza?

Seriously, not having seen a Domino I'm not too sure but Alf's comment re spiral bit is a tad concerning. Sounds (a) expensive and (b) difficult to find?

[mailee]

Yes ALF has it. It does use a long spiral bit and is similar to how the Domino works. In this instance the bit remains in one place and the table with the timber clamped to is moved in/out, left/right to achieve the mortice.

[thatsnotafestool]

Mmmm..struggling to find a supplier of the spiral bits. All sounds a bit negative to me.

[paulchapman]

What sort of chuck does it have - could you use router spiral bits

Cheers

Paul

[thatsnotafestool]

Nice idea..it's a jacob chuck but don't router bits need to spin pretty fast? Faster then this morticer is capable of, I reckon?

[Alf]

thatsnotafestool said:

Mmmm..struggling to find a supplier of the spiral bits.

Same here. Axminster used to have them, but like so much else they don't anymore. I imagine your local purveyor of blades and cutters would be able to help? Where's Scrit when you need him...

Cheers, Alf

[jake]

Loads of them are add-ons for combination machines - typically seem to take the drive from the back of the planer head. This is definitely a stand-alone machine? Anyway, I think scheppach may still do a slot mortiser on one of their planers, they used to anyway, and the C26 combo machine still seems to have a current model slot mortiser attachment in Metabo and Record guise. So dealers of those should be able to supply the bits, one would hope (D&M tools is the one I noticed).

[modernist]

,The best bits I had were from Clico and consisted of a double edged cutter with one toothed for ripping out, followed by a plain edge for smoothing. This was much more robust than the 3 lip variety. I would have thought that there should not be any nproblem in sourcing slot cutters as many universals use them on the end of the planer block.

[nickw]

Hammer/Felder sell them, and you can find them here. As you will see they are not (all) spiral bits.

[cadas]

I've got an old luna combination machine with a brass 'add on ' that allows you to put square mortice chisels on the slot moticer.

Never used it, could be valuable to the right person ;D ;D offers invited

[Scrit]

Disadvantages? Most of the lightweight machines are just that - too lightweight and consequently inaccurate, sloppy, etc. And BTW both the Rojek and Felder slot mortisers are reputed to n#be not the finest pieces of engineering around...... As for the best bits - try the two-fluted bi-directional (left/right spinning) variety. I believe they're a Titman speciality although it might be Clico who makes 'em (Clo#ico certainly do an excellent one-way bit_

Scrit