Cutting a mortice by hand involves the chisel being repeatedly struck with a mallet to 'chop' out waste and then subjected to leverage forces to clear out the loose waste. Therefore the mortice chisel looks completely different to a bevel edge bench chisel, with a thick almost square long blade and chunky handle.
Today mortices are mostly cut using a morticing machine which has an auger bit spinning inside a square hollow chisel, this is a lot faster than cutting the joint by hand. Routers and drills can also be used to cut mortices.
Thats all for October, look out for November's blog post!
Happy Halloween 🎃