Starting to cut the second mortise

Following up from the disastrous first mortise, I did some reading about how to avoid this kind of mistake, and I got some useful tips. I found this answer on Woodworking Stack Exchange particularly helpful.

I decided to make the second mortise on the same leg as the first, so that if it turns out to be another botch, that will make the decision about whether to reject the entire leg piece a lot easier!

I set up the work so that I was sitting down, facing the end grain of the leg piece. This makes it a lot easier to sight whether the chisel is staying true to the vertical. I also clamped a straight piece of wood on to the reference face of the leg, so that it sticks up above the surface I’m cutting down into, to act as a visual guide to just exactly where “vertical” should be. As long as my chisel remains parallel to the guide on the way down, the cut should be parallel to the reference face, and therefore if I use the same technique on the other side, the two holes should meet in the middle.

I’m also taking it a lot slower this time around. I realised that I was trying to keep pace with how Paul cuts his mortises in the video, but that is foolish thing to attempt. I’m a beginner woodworker, and Paul has a lifetime of experience.

I’m only about ⅓ of the way through my second mortise after one session, but I can already tell it’s a huge step up in quality compared with my first mortise.