Home / Series / Hand Tool Rescue / Aired Order / Season 1 / Episode 89

1900s Door Mortiser [Restoration]

This restoration is on a 1900s patented door mortiser made by A.W. Miller Mfg. Co.. You can view the original patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7...​. I obtained this tool knowing it was missing several parts that needed to be remade. Luckily, the missing parts were mostly easy to reproduce, except for the missing hand-wheel. For this, I decided to have all the hand-wheels re-cast in bronze by Windy Hill Foundry. The full process of that re-casting can be seen here: https://youtu.be/qHczjyWYcIU​. Big thank you to him as well! The original finish for this tool was japanning, but I actually ran out of the ingredients to make a new batch, so I had to resort to repainting it. I made a new handle out of jatoba and brass. I was able to salvage the original cutter, but I wish I could find the other cutters, which apparently came with this tool originally. As specialized as this tool is, it does perform very well and make quick work of cutting a slot into some test pieces of wood. Definitely faster, easier, and more accurate than chiseling it out by hand. This tool has an amazing look to it, so I might end up selling or giving this tool away.

English
  • Originally Aired February 25, 2021
  • Runtime 24 minutes
  • Network YouTube
  • Created February 26, 2021 by
    Administrator admin
  • Modified February 26, 2021 by
    Administrator admin