At right is my stock mortiser and table. It was OK but had a few short-comings:
- The table is rather short (~9"), so it didn't support long stock like table legs well. I was constantly having to come up with ways of supporting work pieces.
- The fence was short, so it was hard to clamp stops for the start and stops of the mortises when I was doing multiple identical workpieces.
- The short fence also made it hard to clamp the workpiece in place to keep it from drifting either right-left or away from the fence.
So I decided to replace the table with one of my own making, though I took a lot of guidance from Rockler's version.
Here's my version at right. It has a few improvements over the stock version:- The table is a full 18" wide to better support stock.
- The fence has t-tracks in both the face and the top to allow for a variety of stops. I use a flip stop in the top track to set the start of my mortise and a fixed stop in the face to set the end of the mortise.
- The table also has two tracks perpendicular to the fence to allow for clamping the workpiece and keeping it tight to the fence. I use one rotary guide on the left to keep the workpiece against the fence (I ordered a pair of guides from Rockler, though they don't seem to sell them separately from their table at this time). On the right I use a fence clamp to hold the workpiece not only against the fence but in place horizontally during the down stroke of the mortiser.
