Hi all,

I've recently finished a qualification in carpentry here in France (By way of doing things the wrong way round, I built my timber-framed house first!). And we are continually pushed to be 'rentable'. That is to say, that our time is productive enough to be valuable. This means hand tools only when a power tool cannot do the work, circular saw for nearly everything. And every serious workshop above a certain size (namely everyone with at least one employee) has a chain mortiser. Generally either the LyonFlex P43 (which is frankly a back-breaking beast), or the Mafell or Protool (now Festool) unit.

And yet I notice from the numerous posts and videos from this group that many quite serious (as viewed from over here) timber framing houses are routinely mortising with hand tools. Either boring machines, or eventually auger bits on a drill, always finished by hand with a chisel or slick.

Which leads to my question. Is it a difference in labour cost, or in the client's perceived value of a timber frame (and thus, the price tag that goes with it) that "allows" you all to use such tools, or have I just misread the situation and are you all secretely punching holes left-right-and centre with your Mafell LS 103s while producing YouTube videos about the joys of hand finishing mortises?

In essence, how do you bill the time spent per mortise?

Jon