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Woodpeckers MORTY - loose tenon router jig

JEFFinCLE

Not saying you zoomed it...our video editor did it. Just saying that your jpg is about 1.5 actual size on my screeen (2 different ones, too).

dusty

No matter where the image was captured from, when I view it here on my computer screen there has been some enlargement. My monitor is set at 120%.

I see some less than perfect joints all throughout that image but (except for the CA residue) they all look as though they would be totally acceptable in my shop.

RFGuy

Guys,

Does it matter? I said I didn't enlarge the picture, but I may have more pixels being displayed on my monitor than on yours so my screen capture could result in a larger picture (more pixels) than yours. Scale the picture down by half and I still see all the same imperfections that I pointed out in my post. I didn't purposely try to show anything that wasn't there. The focus should be on what you see or don't see in the picture, rather than analyzing how I took the picture. Better yet go to the timestamp that I gave in my post and look at the video directly to see for yourself on your own monitor.

dusty

I am not likely to buy a MORTY. It is too late in my woodworking career to start laying in expensive toys but I was impressed with the functionality of the Morty. The Morty obviously did exactly what it was suppose to do. It properly positioned all of the mortises.

As we here on this forum so often do we got super critical and in this case of the wrong thing. As has been pointed out by others, the imperfections seen were caused by other than the Morty.

RFGuy

dusty wrote
I am not likely to buy a MORTY. It is too late in my woodworking career to start laying in expensive toys but I was impressed with the functionality of the Morty. The Morty obviously did exactly what it was suppose to do. It properly positioned all of the mortises.

As we here on this forum so often do we got super critical and in this case of the wrong thing. As has been pointed out by others, the imperfections seen were caused by other than the Morty.

Dusty, Jeff,

Thanks. I agree. At times the discussions on this forum tends to get off into the weeds, so I was trying to steer the conversation back towards the topic at hand, i.e. MORTY. I certainly have been guilty of over-analysis here in the past as well and for that I apologize. To be honest, I don't know where the imperfections (that I see) are coming from. If you look at the first picture below from Woodpeckers you can see very clean lines on the mortises. These aren't through mortises, but still you can see that these mortises look absolutely perfect (to me). Coincidentally, this is also how mortises look from my Festool Domino. When you compare this to the screen capture (2nd pic below) that I took from the video, you can see that those mortises are definitely a bit rougher and not the perfect oval shape like in the 1st pic. Is this difference due to the wood species, the router bit used, router guide bushing, router, or MORTY itself? Nothing we do in woodworking is "perfect" and there are always variances and imperfection due to many factors, but I really expected the mortises in the 2nd pic to look a lot closer to how they do in the 1st pic. IF I were in the market to buy a MORTY I would surely want to know where those differences are coming from before purchasing. I would also like to know how the angle adjustment works, e.g. if you rotate that center portion that makes the mortise, are there detents for setting it back to 0 degrees? Are there detents for any other angles to lock them in or is it completely freehand? This wasn't made clear to me in their video.

P.S. A 3rd pic was added to re-scale the 2nd pic down by 50% for comparison.

JEFFinCLE

There are no detents to locate the angle of the mortise. In the owner's manual we show the procedure to use a square against the key that turns the template.

dusty

I keeping looking back at this thread and the images that have been posted. I have absolutely convinced myself that the "imperfections" that we dwell on are not a byproduct of the Morty.

I would bet heavily that if we could see the mortises (these same mortises) without the tenons inserted that there would be no detectable "imperfections". Said another way, I believe what we are criticizing is the direct resolve of how the tenons were cut. If true - shame on Jeff.

I'd buy a Morty if I thought I would get any use out of it. I don't do much real woodworking anymore.

RFGuy

As I said before, I am NOT a fan of through mortises. I just don't like the aesthetic. However, I know some woodworkers do like them. To try to put this one to rest, I made some through mortises with the Domino even though it is not intended to make through mortises. Wood species is cherry and it was ripped to a square blank approximately 22mm thick. Domino was set for tight (small) mortises at a depth of 28mm with a 5mm cutter. Below are pictures showing the unvarnished (pun intended) results. Unfortunately the Domino cutters taper and become thicker once you get past the cutting portion of the bit so as you can see in the 1st pic there is some damage to the wood fibers on the flat part of the mortise as the larger than 5mm cutter shank left a detent (crushed wood fibers) in the wood - this never happens with non-through mortises on the Domino. Other than this, the front side looks very clean to me. On the backside, I do see the hang-ons, as Jeff calls them, on the curved portion of the mortises, but the flat part of the mortise is NOT clean by my definition (or eye). IF I wanted to make through mortises, I wouldn't be happy with this personally, but that is just me. I suspect there is some runout at the end of the Domino cutters and/or variability in cut as the cutter oscillates side to side that is causing this uneven cut. Bottomline is that I don't see the Domino as a suitable tool for making through mortises unless you like to look at glue/wood filler in the gaps of the joint. Perhaps the MORTY is a better option for making through mortises compared to the Domino, but in my opinion more needs to be investigated to determine how to get the cleanest, best cut possible with it. I expect that MORTY does everything it is supposed to do and does it well. However, customers will probably want to experiment with different router bits, routers and guide bushings with it to get the best possible cut should they decide to make through mortises. Might also need a sacrificial backer board to minimize tearout, hang-ons, etc.

Front of Mortise (Domino plunging from this side):

Back of Mortise:

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