7104L Makita Chain Morticer

A prominent focus of these product reviews is the propensity of a tool to save a tradesman time, and thus money. At the top of the toolbag will be the essentials used all day every day like the hammer, favoured screwdriver, chisels etc. In the dark recesses at the bottom will be those lesser used items; the chalk line, bevel gauge, countersink. Handy when needed, but they only get used occasionally. But back in the garage are the real white elephants. The tools purchased on a whim because they were cheap or just looked useful. Although never used they still cost money. Fortunately, with hand tools those costs are not big.

When it comes to buying power tools the cost can run to hundreds of pounds and it is essential to get that money back through labour saved. There is only one economic maxim for the building trade, ‘time is money.’ Any spending on equipment must be recouped by helping a job progress quicker. The Makita chain mortiser is a tool that is both very expensive, and very useful.

Essentially a mini chainsaw on a stand, the mortiser makes light work of cutting into green oak beams to a depth of up to 150mm. By using the tool in three easy to select positions a 130mm long and 30mm wide mortise can be cut in one pass. The mortise can be easily enlarged with some minor adjustments of the measuring gauge.

Retailing at over £500 the tool is a significant investment. But anyone who has ever worked with oak beams will know how time consuming cutting them by hand can be. At TBE we estimate that a large mortise, say 200mm by 50mm, would take an hour of chiselling by hand. And there are still the problems of keeping the hole square and at a constant depth. The Makita chain mortiser will do a hole that size in less than ten minutes. Some brief maths would work as follows:

Hand cutting 4 mortises in an oak beam = 4hrs

Machine cutting 4 mortises = 40 mins

The chain mortiser is six times quicker than hand chiselling. The machine could do 48 mortises in a day, compared to 8 by hand.

At £150/day it will cost £900 in labour to cut 48 mortises, assuming the chisel was already paid for.

After spending £600 on the mortiser and £150 on labour the total for one day is £750.

The chain mortiser will clearly pay for itself, provided there is enough work for it to do. Anyone building any oak framed structure would make a serious saving. Over time it would also prove economical to builders who work on old timber framed buildings where sole plates and other beams need replacing or repairing.

This is a tool that can only do one job, and a very specific one at that, but it does that job very well. It saves time, and provided they are competent with power tools, an operative can use the machine to cut mortises that would have been beyond ability with a hammer and chisel.

If you do any real quantity of timber framing, or work with large size timbers on a regular basis, this tool will save you time, and thus money. Don’t be put off by the initial outlay, look long -term and you will be quids in.