You know, this:
Which results in this:
The drill bit slipped in the drill chuck on the mortiser, allowing it to be driven up into the chisel and fracturing the chisel. This in turn blew out the side of the piece of cherry I was working on. And I've got 16 of these 5/16" mortises to cut. I'm pretty sure I had the drill chuck tight. Ah, well, back to plan B:
The Ray Iles pigsticker to the rescue.
Not too shabby. This was actually a practice on the other end of the blown out workpiece. I need to replace that piece, then chop the 16 mortises. Should take about 2-3 minutes each for the mortises, so maybe an hour total including making the replacement piece.
Kirk