Makita - 7410L 7104L 10.5 Amp Chain Mortiser

I'm building a timber frame barn and was contemplating cutting all of the joinery by hand (I have a lot of very good quality framing chisels, Japanese saws, etc. ), but the sheer number of large and deep mortises convinced me to spend the money on a chain mortiser. Oh. My. God. This machine is one of the best machines, woodworking or otherwise, that I have ever used.It easily and smoothly plunges a first mortise (about 11/16" x 2-1/16" with the 18mm chain) all the way through a 6x6. It has a depth setting which brings up the only negative... in a blind mortise the bottom will be rounded - you have to cut down about 1.25" deeper than your tenon. Then you rotate the chain to position 1 and cut again, then position 2 and cut a third time. You now have a mortise about 5" wide all the way through. Pull a lever and the chain moves forward about a half inch and the process repeats. If necessary, adjust the unit for the next cut and repeat. In my case, I'm cutting 2" x 5.5" all the way through... takes about 10 minutes per mortise and the result is a perfectly sized rectangular hole. It also will cut lap joints (for the tenon), but this is more difficult to set up.Can't recommend this tool enough. I planned to sell this machine when I'm done with the barn, but I might have to keep it just because it is so well engineered. Anyone want to buy some chisels?

This tool saved me 60-90 minutes of hand work per mortise. The chain mortiser is expensive, but the productivity is enormous. I cut and cleaned 28 2x6" (4.5" deep) mortises in 4.5 hours (not including layout). Easy to use, accurate, repeatable. Two recommendations, clear the shavings immediately. Also, mark the base with a pen to ID the inside of the chain cutter for quick resets when returning to the original mortise wall. Final comment, the mortiser will work best for production work if the beams are square planed ahead of time.

If you do timber framing....you are going to want to get this. Easy to use. Read the instructions. There are a few YouTube videos that demo this tool.

Expensive but well worth the money.Accurate and easy to learn how to use.A great accessory for rustic furniture or heavy duty framing. I’m glad I purchased this tool.

This tool saves a lot of time in a timber frame build. It is a heavy well built tool that will cut a 2 x 6 mortise in a matter of minutes in white oak timber. To do this in a traditional way would take a lot longer. It cuts safely, and accurately. I would strongly recommend to read the operators manual to get the most out of the tool. If I had one complaint is that there isn't a carrying case to protect it during transport. To was fixed this a crate made out of 1/2 inch plywood.

Putting review update at the beginning here, because most of us don't read all the way to the end. I returned one of these units, ordered a second one, but the one I just received has the identical *serious* manufacturing defect, which looks like a CNC programming error machining the casting that guides the cut. Every mortise you cut will be faulty. Cutter bar for first plunge is not perpendicular to timber surface, and cannot be made so. Envision a bar that is off vertical by 1 cm over depth of timber ( an exaggeration). A plunge will cut its lead face parallel to the guide bars because the tip is foremost as it descends. But trailing edge will cut farther back the deeper you plunge because of the angle offset. So the front side of the cut will be perpendicular to the timber face, the back side will cut 1 cm farther back on the top of the timber than on the bottom. One side of mortise, the back side, will not be perpendicular to timber face. Unacceptable! See images. See attached images. The casting vertical stop is machined to match the round stop pin, but the casting hits the stop pin before the bar has reached vertical. Upper machined end is half a circle, lower end that is reference vertical looks incompletely machined. Amazon may be selling older units; the image in Amazon also shows a blue plastic bar guard that is not included in the machine that I received.First review of first unit I bought and returned:Hard to decide what to write in this review. I am almost certain that the unit I have is defective and I will either return or exchange it, but anyone contemplating a purchase this expensive will read every review, so I will offer details apart from the defect. I have a lot of tools, have been using them for decades, have written plenty of Amazon reviews because I rely on reviews written by other people. I have many Makita tools, all good, some outstanding: corded and uncorded circular saws from 7-1/4" through 10" to 16", 4.5" and 4" grinders, plenty more. I have made many timber mortises with drill and chisel, had never used a chainsaw mortiser though I have used chainsaws plenty. This tool is a bit of a beast, clamps onto timber firmly ( but can't clamp onto anything thinner than 1.5 inches ). It doesn't have a great way to see exactly where it will bite, which is important for mortises, only a very small indicator in long direction and just your eye for the side dimension ( chainsaw teeth are tricky to eyeball, more so than circular saw teeth, if you are not accustomed to chainsaws.). Plunge cutting with a chainsaw tears out end grain, so I used an idea I got from another user somewhere, to outline the mortise with a chisel and hammer first, cutting fibers at the end of the mortise. That works well but has to be in the right place and it slows down the process quite a bit. And you have to cut the fibers with a chisel on both sides of the timber, also the side where the chain will emerge, which is not easy, especially if your timber is not completely square. And my particular unit does not emerge on the back side of the cut where it should, because in its perpendicular position it is *not* perpendicular to the work surface, so the saw plunges at a slight angle and emerges about 1/8" short of its target on the back side because of that angle. ( the vertical posts are perpendicular to the workpiece, but my saw blade bar is not ( see attached photo). It took me about a day to figure out what is wrong, which is unfixable; the angle stop is actuated by a solid pin riding in a groove machined into the casting that houses the bar and chain. My saw stops a little short of vertical, and if I inspect it closely I can see that the machining of the circular groove stopped a little short. I have absolutely no way to know if this happened only on one saw, the saw shipped to me, or on many saws until Makita, hopefully, noticed the problem. The ends of my mortises angle about 1/8 inch over a 6" plunge on the lead edge, but are perpendicular on the far edge. You will have to think about why that would happen :); when cutting the far edge only the tip cuts the mortise end, and the tip cuts parallel to the struts whatever the bar angle. Not so for the lead edge. Anyway, I feel obligated to give just a one star review to a tool that is probably a 3 or 4 star machine in general ( but not a 5; I think its indicators are too imprecise and the lateral increment mechanism, not described here, I think is rather klunky. Also the instruction manual is close to nonexistent, so you have to mess around some at first. )

This chain mortiser is worth its weight in gold. I have been using this for the past 30 days and the only maintenance so far is tightening and oiling the chain. At this rate, I will finish cutting every beam for my 32 x 48' barn using the original chain. My advice is to let the weight of the machine do the working and not force it into the beams. I see no need to purchase a high-end mortiser (SwissPRO, HEMA) unless you're a professional timber framer.

It does a great job and saves a lot of time.