I may need an intervention

[Rennie Heuer]

I was thinking about my build list - those jobs I have deposits on and are scheduled for the next few months - and I am seeing no fewer than 150 mortise and tenon joints and all the time I’ll have to invest in set ups, test cuts, and blade changes. It adds up.

Here is a call out to all of you that have taken the plunge (pun intended) and purchased a Festool Domino. Do you love it? Hate it? Do you find yourself using it more than you expected? (I hesitated buying the track saw but it has changed my work processes in ways I could not have imagined) most of all, is it worth the stratosphere level price tag? Also, there are many variations - with case, with huge supply of dominos, different bits. Which are a good value and which are useful?

Just looked at the price again. I need a paper bag to breath into.

 

[Jim DeLaney]

Love mine. I have the original. It'll go up to 10mm (about 3/8"). In 4/4 stock, I generally use the 6mm (¼") dominoes. Sometimes I double them up for 6/4 stock.

There's a bigger model that makes bigger slots, but I've never used one.

 

[Ted Calver]

I have the XL DF 700 and the RTS 500 cutter adapter from Seneca Woodworking that allows the mounting/use of any of the DF 500 cutters in the 700. Love it and am going to sell my Powermatic floor model mortiser because I haven't used it since I got the Domino. I keep adding to the accessories as I go along and just got the connector set to build some break down pieces. No regrets here.

 

[Dan Noren]

i will even throw in your first set....

 

[glenn bradley]

I have a 500 and use it about 25% of the time. Most of what I make is my own design structurally regardless of the client's input on how the piece looks. There are times when a combination of dominoes don't work as well as a single or double tenon scaled to the joint. This is an opinion and could definitely be hangover from doing M&T my chosen way for so long.

When I get into the new shop I am going to commit myself to use the Domino as much as possible because it wasn't cheap . Seriously, I want to make a full press effort with the tool before I discount its value to me. This commitment will start at the design phase building joints that work well with the Donimo. I have already begun this change in the design of our new bedroom set.



I make my own dominoes from the scrap of the material being used. Even with my moderate use I have enough leftover domino stock to do several projects. Due to the era I grew up in I move pretty easily between imperial and metric when it comes to short lengths (I have trouble picturing a kilometer). Even so I flipped the index plate, marked it with a scribe, and filled it to allow imperial reference since that is the scale I use when designing.



I'm pretty sure I posted this in a thread.

The spare doo-dads that come with the kit are handy for their intended use but, like a lot of Festool stuff seem cheap and plasticky. They work but just seem like they could be better designed and better made for the price. The aftermarket Festool accessories are numerous, better quality, and equally expensive . I can say I see no difference in the Festool cutters versus CMT or others but again, I am an occasional user.

In the end it is a $1500 decision. Being familiar with the things you build via your threads here on the forum I can say that bringing the tool to the work is not necessarily a requirement. This is true for me as well. I vacillated on a floor standing mortiser versus the Domino and went with the Domino. Already owning routers and the Mortise Pal I am not sure I made the right decision. The Festool does take up less shop space than a floor mortiser and that can sway a decision by a lot.

 

[fred hargis]

I have both of them (bought used at what I thought were fair prices). I've used them enough to know that if I were in the business they would earn their keep. As a hobbyist it's pretty much a luxury. One thing that did happen with the big one (700) was during use a few months back it quit working. The bit would rotate and oscillate very slowly, then stop. I'd turn it off and back on it would do the same thing. I printed a Festool work order off the internet (local tool shops don't deal with them) and sent it to them with a request for an estimate to repair. I explained I had bought it second hand and this was not a warranty claim. 5 days later it showed back up at my house fully repaired with an explanation they had replaced some motor parts. I'm not a big Festool fan, but I thought that was superb CS. One thing to keep in mind, the tenons can get really expensive....the largest ones from Festool are almost $1 each. There are after market ones for the smaller sizes (Taylor Tools) and they are quite good.

 

[Ted Calver]

Fred's post on tenon cost prompts me to mention that they are pretty easy to make on the table saw. I'm not sure if the official tenons are compressed so they swell with glue, but my table saw made ones are still holding well. Making your own gives you a much wider choice of materials too.

 

[Steve Southwood]

I have the 500 and would buy it again. End all, be all? Probably not.

I also have a FMT which I also use and will never sale.

 

[fred hargis]

Fred's post on tenon cost prompts me to mention that they are pretty easy to make on the table saw. I'm not sure if the official tenons are compressed so they swell with glue, but my table saw made ones are still holding well. Making your own gives you a much wider choice of materials too.

Another thing about making your own is you can set the mortiser to cut the widest mortise and make your tenons to fit it. That gives you a tenon that is maybe 1/2 again as wide as the OEM ones. The OEM tenons are a little less than 1" wide.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

I have a 500 and use it about 25% of the time. Most of what I make is my own design structurally regardless of the client's input on how the piece looks. There are times when a combination of dominoes don't work as well as a single or double tenon scaled to the joint. This is an opinion and could definitely be hangover from doing M&T my chosen way for so long.

When I get into the new shop I am going to commit myself to use the Domino as much as possible because it wasn't cheap . Seriously, I want to make a full press effort with the tool before I discount its value to me. This commitment will start at the design phase building joints that work well with the Donimo. I have already begun this change in the design of our new bedroom set.

No, its not cheap. It costs as much as my bandsaw! My thought is that, over time, it will pay for itself in time saved. My current method for M&T is either cutting the mortise on my mortising b=machine or with a jig and router, then using my cross cut blade to cut the tenon cheeks and finally remove the waste on the TS with a tenon jig. Alternately I will use a dado stack or, rarely, the bandsaw. Any way you look at it there are multiple set ups and A LOT of tweaking to get things just right.

I have both of them (bought used at what I thought were fair prices). I've used them enough to know that if I were in the business they would earn their keep. As a hobbyist it's pretty much a luxury. One thing that did happen with the big one (700) was during use a few months back it quit working. The bit would rotate and oscillate very slowly, then stop. I'd turn it off and back on it would do the same thing. I printed a Festool work order off the internet (local tool shops don't deal with them) and sent it to them with a request for an estimate to repair. I explained I had bought it second hand and this was not a warranty claim. 5 days later it showed back up at my house fully repaired with an explanation they had replaced some motor parts. I'm not a big Festool fan, but I thought that was superb CS. One thing to keep in mind, the tenons can get really expensive....the largest ones from Festool are almost $1 each. There are after market ones for the smaller sizes (Taylor Tools) and they are quite good.

Finding these thigs used is like finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! Even used they command a premium price and you never know how they were treated. For now I am just looking at the smaller version believing that will handle 90% of my M&T needs.

I have the 500 and would buy it again. End all, be all? Probably not.

I also have a FMT which I also use and will never sale.

But you have found it useful - and that helps. Do you also find it saves time?

Another thing about making your own is you can set the mortiser to cut the widest mortise and make your tenons to fit it. That gives you a tenon that is maybe 1/2 again as wide as the OEM ones. The OEM tenons are a little less than 1" wide.

I was waiting for this topic to come up. I remember reading somewhere that these were easy to make if you had a planer, table saw, and a router table.

 

[glenn bradley]

I was waiting for this topic to come up. I remember reading somewhere that these were easy to make if you had a planer, table saw, and a router table.

Yes, very easy. I'm afraid I just added to my previous post as opposed to reposting this morning. You may want to take a look back at post #5. I need to stop doing that ;-)

 

[Don Baer]

I am the odd man on this one but I was under the understanding the the Domino was just another type of a biscuit machine and since I never like using biscuits I either used M/T or dowels. Maloof used dowels quite a bit that how he aligned boards together when making glue ups for table tops and chair seats, and joining aprons to table legs. When I did the Church commission that how I did all of the pieces for it and 14 years later they are still holding up fine. But like I said I'm the odd man. I did invest in a great doweling jig from Rocklers.

 

[Dan Noren]

i use biscuits a lot, and m and t with the mortising machine, and sneak up on it with a tenoning jig on the table saw, using scrap the same size, rather than good wood.

 

[Charles Lent]

You don't need a fancy mortise and tenon jig or a Domino to get good M&T joints. The old square mortising drill/chisels and mortising machines were very crude when compared to making mortises with a router. Making "floating tenons" that fit perfectly is quite easy with a table saw and a planer. You quite likely already have both of these.

You can go with "floating tenon" joints quite easily. You can make a jig so the mortises can be easily cut with a router, a guide bushing, and an up spiral bit. Plunge the bit straight in many times, moving over about 3/4 of the bit diameter each time to clear out the bulk, then slide the plunged router bit end to end in the mortise, and then once all the way around tightly against the jig guide to assure that all sides have been completely cleaned. Your mortise is now complete. Repeat this on your mating work piece. Use the same edge of your jig lined up with the face side of your work piece when routing both mating work pieces, if you want the face sides of both to line up when the joint goes together.

Make your floating tenon stock using your table saw for the tenon long, but the width and rough thickness needed, and then use a thickness planer to get the thickness exactly the width of your previously cut mortises. Then cut them to length with the chop saw as you need them, with the length determined by 2X the depth of your mortise, minus 1/8" (You don't want the tenon to bottom out and prevent the joint from going fully together). Don't worry about rounding the tenon ends to fit the rounded ends of the mortise. Just make them fit the flat sides of the mortise and leave the 1/2 round ends of the mortise for the excess glue to squeeze into. The strength of the joint is in how well the flat side surfaces of the mortise and tenon fit together. Dry, they should slide together with very light pressure and no rattle, but not require a mallet to push them together either. You want a few thousandths space for the glue.

About 18 years ago I took on a job that had over 1,600 M&T joints, and searched long and hard to find a good way to make them quickly, easily, and with the precision needed to be able to avoid the the hand fitting that was required for the old square drill/chisel mortise and table saw tenon cuts, followed my rabbet planning of the tenons to fit those poorly cut mortises. I tried many jigs that were on the market, and none could make both the mortise and the tenon well enough so they didn't need trimming and fitting until I bought a Leigh FMT now called FMT Pro jig. With the same setup I can cut both the mortise and matching tenon, and there is an adjustment on the jig that lets you tune the joint tightness. Once set, you can make hundreds of mortises and tenons of the same size and all will be a perfect fit to each other with no fine tuning. Any tenon will fit any mortise. This FMT jig paid for itself easily twice over on that one job.

I have since tried this "Floating Tenons" method mentioned above, and would likely have done that job with floating tenons and not bought the FMT jig if I had known how it easy it was. With matching mortises in both work pieces, floating tenons can be very easy to do and are almost as accurate as using the FMT jig, when made the way that I described above. There once was a jig on the market called a "Mortise Pal" that eliminated the need to make the jig for routing the mortises for floating tenons, but the manufacturer is out of business. I have a friend who has one and I now wish that I had bought one when they were available, but sadly I didn't. Either do some research on the "Mortise Pal" jig and copy it's design, or come up with a version of a router bushing guided jig for mortising from YouTube videos and then make one. Most can be made quite easily. The jig doesn't need to be perfect as long as you can make all of the mortises the same with it. You then just need to make the tenon stock to fit them, what ever the mortise width ends up being. The planer lets you get the tenons to be a perfect fit very easily no matter what the final width of the mortise is. Keep your jig and left over tenon stock for the next time that you need them.

Charley

 

[Don Baer]

Charles post reminded me of what Sam Maloof said about dowels and that "a dowel as nothing more than a floating tenion."

 

[fred hargis]

I am the odd man on this one but I was under the understanding the the Domino was just another type of a biscuit machine and since I never like using biscuits I either used M/T or dowels.

I guess I think of it as a mortiser rather than a biscuit joiner. After all you can change bits to cut mortises different heights (?, maybe it's the depth) although the width of the mortise is fixed to the threee widths the mortiser will cut.. The plunge depth into the wood is adjustable as well.

 

[Darren Wright]

I don't have one, but have considered getting one. I'm feeling like they would be a bit stronger than dowels, quicker to use, and from a finish standpoint would look better than biscuits or pocket screws, though each of those still have their place in my shop.

I think for your level of quality/workmanship they would compliment your work Rennie and save you time overall, to pay for itself.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

"a dowel as nothing more than a floating tenion."

Structurally I'm going to have to disagree with that somewhat.

The main difference is that dowels will slowly shift from round->oval and back again as humidity changes. This will over the long term break the glue joint in some dowel joints (I say some because it depends on the glue, the wood, the grain orientation, etc.. factors which I would guess Sam was well aware of, perhaps adapted for in some cases, and perhaps didn't care about in others).

A tennon on the other hand is a flat grain<->flat grain structure which is inherently a more stable glue joint.

Whether or not this matters depends on the projects expected lifespan, what the dowels are doing structurally, how the rest of the structure is designed, what specific materials are used, etc..

But there are definite differences in expected lifespan if you measure long enough for same materials and dowels vs tennons (loose or fixed).

 

[Rennie Heuer]

You don't need a fancy mortise and tenon jig or a Domino to get good M&T joints. The old square mortising drill/chisels and mortising machines were very crude when compared to making mortises with a router. Making "floating tenons" that fit perfectly is quite easy with a table saw and a planer. You quite likely already have both of these.

You can go with "floating tenon" joints quite easily. You can make a jig so the mortises can be easily cut with a router, a guide bushing, and an up spiral bit. Plunge the bit straight in many times, moving over about 3/4 of the bit diameter each time to clear out the bulk, then slide the plunged router bit end to end in the mortise, and then once all the way around tightly against the jig guide to assure that all sides have been completely cleaned. Your mortise is now complete. Repeat this on your mating work piece. Use the same edge of your jig lined up with the face side of your work piece when routing both mating work pieces, if you want the face sides of both to line up when the joint goes together.

Make your floating tenon stock using your table saw for the tenon long, but the width and rough thickness needed, and then use a thickness planer to get the thickness exactly the width of your previously cut mortises. Then cut them to length with the chop saw as you need them, with the length determined by 2X the depth of your mortise, minus 1/8" (You don't want the tenon to bottom out and prevent the joint from going fully together). Don't worry about rounding the tenon ends to fit the rounded ends of the mortise. Just make them fit the flat sides of the mortise and leave the 1/2 round ends of the mortise for the excess glue to squeeze into. The strength of the joint is in how well the flat side surfaces of the mortise and tenon fit together. Dry, they should slide together with very light pressure and no rattle, but not require a mallet to push them together either. You want a few thousandths space for the glue.

About 18 years ago I took on a job that had over 1,600 M&T joints, and searched long and hard to find a good way to make them quickly, easily, and with the precision needed to be able to avoid the the hand fitting that was required for the old square drill/chisel mortise and table saw tenon cuts, followed my rabbet planning of the tenons to fit those poorly cut mortises. I tried many jigs that were on the market, and none could make both the mortise and the tenon well enough so they didn't need trimming and fitting until I bought a Leigh FMT now called FMT Pro jig. With the same setup I can cut both the mortise and matching tenon, and there is an adjustment on the jig that lets you tune the joint tightness. Once set, you can make hundreds of mortises and tenons of the same size and all will be a perfect fit to each other with no fine tuning. Any tenon will fit any mortise. This FMT jig paid for itself easily twice over on that one job.

I have since tried this "Floating Tenons" method mentioned above, and would likely have done that job with floating tenons and not bought the FMT jig if I had known how it easy it was. With matching mortises in both work pieces, floating tenons can be very easy to do and are almost as accurate as using the FMT jig, when made the way that I described above. There once was a jig on the market called a "Mortise Pal" that eliminated the need to make the jig for routing the mortises for floating tenons, but the manufacturer is out of business. I have a friend who has one and I now wish that I had bought one when they were available, but sadly I didn't. Either do some research on the "Mortise Pal" jig and copy it's design, or come up with a version of a router bushing guided jig for mortising from YouTube videos and then make one. Most can be made quite easily. The jig doesn't need to be perfect as long as you can make all of the mortises the same with it. You then just need to make the tenon stock to fit them, what ever the mortise width ends up being. The planer lets you get the tenons to be a perfect fit very easily no matter what the final width of the mortise is. Keep your jig and left over tenon stock for the next time that you need them.

Charley

Charley,

Thanks for the very detailed response - lots of good information in there!

I know a specialized machine is not necessary to make a good M&T and I have used the methods you noted many times over more years than I care to count. All work well. The difference is the time needed for set up, fine tuning, and fitting. I looked long and hard at the FMT. I like Leigh stuff and this looks like a solid reliable jig. What the floating tenon has over this, and any other method of making a tenon, is the need to cut everything over-length and then carefully cut your shoulders to give you the exact length needed between your joints. Whereas with the floating tenon you simply cut your length from the beginning and move on. In essence, you do not have to cut to exact length twice, only once. Another thing I recently thought of is any mortise that must be cut in the face of wide material would be impossible on a mortiser or the FMT and might require the building of a specific jig or template.

Another benefit, as you noted, is the speed and accuracy. Any home made jig might be a bit finicky and some projects might require me to make more than one jig - time I'd rather spend on the project. Even the FMT will require set up time each time a dimension changes in the build. If I see it correctly the floating tenon system requires only a layout line and setting the distance from the face to the centerline of the tenon. (Granted there are different depths and widths but these are simple adjustments to the machine that do not require repositioning/adjusting/rebuilding of a jig and another round of test fitting.

I sound like I've already talked myself into this decision. Good thing I'm cheap and hate to part with my hard earned $$. I just keep thinking back to how long (years) I labored over the decision to buy my track saw. That was over $600 and it hurt... a lot. However, it is turning out to be one of the best investments I've ever made in the shop as it has saved me dozens of hours in the year or so I've had it and I'm sure it will continue to do so as I find new ways to incorporate it into my builds.

 

[Rennie Heuer]

Is this the place I remind myself the Domino, like so many products from Festool, is out of stock and not expected in till September? Hmmm. Should check with my local store.