New mortiser table

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.

For more photos showing greater detail, see my photo album.