Thanks again for you input since I am very new to this. You mention a 2" shipwrights auger bit. Do you have a good source for these? Also I was wondering about the through mortise and whether to drill as far as I could from one side and the do the remainder from the oposite side or to just go half way from each side. It seems that it would be more accurate going half way from each side. Also when you use the 2" auger bit do you just us it to drill the ends of each mortise or do you drill consecutive holes the entire length of the mortise? The feedback here was that if you drilled continous 2" holes that the overall width of the mortise would be slightly wider than 2".