the joinery derek uses has done the test of time and old guys I knew kept using it even when time saving gizmos were around. Likely they would look at a piece and not feel as good about it as had they not built as they were taught.
Contributor
the joinery derek uses has done the test of time and old guys I knew kept using it even when time saving gizmos were around. Likely they would look at a piece and not feel as good about it as had they not built as they were taught.
Member
The biggest issue I have with Derek's views is he assume we all use only Festool pre-made tenons. The only Festool tenons I've used came with my XL (I bought it used) and were 12mm thick. They seemed to fit fine to me. They were fairly tight but the indentations should hold a little glue. I think the indentations would tend to help you get enough glue into the joint.
What I have almost always done is to make my own tenon stock. It is super easy and fast and I just use up scrap so there is no cost. In addition, I can make them wider and, if necessary, thicker than stock tenons. The machine will make repeated plunges with part of the bit in the previous hole. It still cuts smooth and easy. Normally I am just making a longer mortise. I think the widest I've made was about 6 inches long (in a crib, Wood magazine design). If you make your own tenon stock you can make them fit however you want.
There isn't anything wrong with beech for tenons - I am pretty sure that is what Festool uses - but I prefer to have tenons of the same wood as the rest of the project.
A domino machine just cuts a mortise. If you don't like the idea of a loose tenon just make an integral one. No way it needs to be inferior in any way to any other mortise and tenon joint.
I also use a Seneca adapter to use smaller bits in my XL. I think any argument against this is just thinly disguised marketing for Festool. No issues for me.
Contributor
Ollie,
I don’t have a domino machine, but they seem like a good idea.At the Cleveland, Ohio, museum I ran across this.57ADAAC5-CBDB-4F3E-BA3E-2AA053140B6D.jpegAnd they showed the inside of another.05054E98-01E0-482E-95D2-C34D0AF95F78.jpegCheck it out. Loose-tenon joinery has stood the test of time. You can see it right here. Use it if you have it with no apologies. The ancient Egyptians would have, if they had one.
Cick on the pictures to enlarge them.
Contributor
if you are trying to make a point for festering you should show us joinery in a rail and style, not a spline to align two case pieces. They didnt use a mortise and tennon as its side grain to side grain.
Egyptians used mortise and tennon and germans likely before them.
Contributor
Good point. Those mortises are rounded. Perhaps they had a Domino or a router jig!
Charlie Jones
Contributor
Originally Posted by Jim Dwight
Jim, I could equally argue that many may not own an XL, nor does the average punter make their own custom dominos. The most common Domino machine is likely to be the DF500 (such as mine), and my comments are directed at those that use the commercial dominos.
Nevertheless, I am not meaning to appear argumentative, nor suggesting that using the Domino makes one second rate woodworker. As is often mentioned, we should not blame our tools. However, when I look around the various woodworking fori, what I so frequently see are pieces of work poorly conceptualised. My analytic side identifies this as a product of taking shortcuts. A Domino is not responsible for this - in the right hands it is a wonderful tool - but its strength also may deliver a weakness.
I am interested in using my DF500 more often. As you helpfully point out, it is a tool for making mortices. It is up to us to understand this and then to explore how it may be developed past the basic machine-sized dimension.
The issue of repair-ready joinery is partially a feature of the way we use a domino. How many here use hide glue? Hide glue is reversible and repairable (it accepts glue-on-glue). It is more likely, but not a given, that someone using a domino will be seeking to work quickly (since this is its strength) and using a PVC glue. PVC glue is not glue-on-glue and does not come apart easily for a repair. Of course, there is no assurance that a more traditional joint will be glued any differently.
My purpose for making these points was to raise awareness of the issues, some obvious and some hidden.
Regards from Perth
Derek
Member
Derek (and others),
I agree completely that the ~1 inch deep mortises the DF500 makes are not deep enough for many projects. That is a bigger limitation, in my mind, than the 10 mm cutter. I can make a wider mortise than 10mm with multiple passes but I can't "fix" a 1 inch deep mortise. This limitation was the biggest reason I went with the DF700. 2 3/4 inches has been enough at least so far. No regrets.
For those who have not used one, the mortises the domino makes are very, very similar to those made by a plunge router. Smoother walls than I got from my hollow chisel mortiser.
I also agree with Derek that the big advantage of the domino is speed. But I would add speed with precision. It is easy to get a good mortise where you want it quickly with a domino. I use more mortise and tenon joints because I can do them so quickly and well.
I am no festool fan. The domino is the only festool power tool I own. It does something than no other tool can do so quickly and well. But it is also extremely possible to make mortises many other ways.
Jim
Contributor
I’ll throw my opinion in as well. This has been a very good discussion and some good points have been made. I have a DF500 and honestly use it more for cabinetry and even solid wood carcasses. It’s just as fast a a biscuit joiner but makes a stronger joint. It’s great for traditional face frames as well. I still think it’s comparable to glued mortise and tenon joinery however if you draw-bore the joint it far exceedes only glue for strength and longevity. Therefore I’ll be sticking with traditional joinery for critical joints table leg to apron, doors, etc. A well executed drawbored joint closes up without clamps once the pin(s) are driven home.
Contributor
I was using my Domino today with the 4mm dominoes. It really is a nice tool - very accurate and easy to use.
Seems that I wind up using it on just about every project I do.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Contributor
I appreciate Derek's reminder that strength is not the only important criteria in joinery.
< insert spurious quote here >
Moderator
I think our tastes and aesthetic preferences has less longevity than a Domino joint in many applications.
About the only places I wouldn't personally use an appropriately sized domino joint is on a chair or something similar that gets stressed and wracked and twisted and loaded often.
I have and will use them on tables of any size.
Contributor
The thing to remember is that the Domino is not a binary tool. That is, use the Domino in those places where its strengths come into play and use other joinery where the Domino is not the best solution.
I use the Domino on just about every project I do and I appreciate its speed and accuracy. But for certain joints, as Prashun points out, I'd use some other technique.
Mike
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Member
Surprised so much resistance to use on chairs. Look at it this way - what else are you going to fit into a 1.5 -1.5" leg with 2.5 -3" seat stretchers connected from 2 different directions? How about a 1x1.5" stretcher with a single 10mm domino on each end? Please, enlighten me and tell me the proper method of joinery. (mortise and tenon, right? but we've established that's what a domino is, except for one word: "loose".)
While I understand size matters for mortise and tenon work, there is barely enough real estate to fit four 10mm dominos at that leg joint. In some instances, you still need to miter the ends of the dominos just to pack it all in there. And of course, corner blocks are used under the seat at each corner to brace inside of joint as well.
Now, consider the joinery of mass-produced factory chairs. You'll be sold a "chair", but in fact, receive a chair kit that you get to assemble, likely including some glue-up, right there on your own dining room floor. Please explain how a domino is such a travesty to use in place of that methodology?
Methinks those that challenge it's use for a chair have likely never actually built a chair.
Make a sample of your own, and I think you'll find it's quite robust.
Moderator
YMMV, but I've built a fair number of chairs, and even one with dominos. I've also bought and assembled enough cheap chairs to make these conclusions:
A lot of commercial chairs - even expensive ones - will wrack and wobble and come apart after several years of reasonable use. I wouldn't use that as a bench mark for dominos. The bar should be higher.
The Maloofs I've made use screws and (critically) dados that resist those forces better. The Windsor chairs and stools I've made use joints under compression and tapered sockets and the users weight to lock joints. These work well.
The chair I made with dominos was a poor aesthetic design. So I dismantled it before I completed it. I was shocked how easily the 10mm dominos dislodged. I dropped the chair deliberately and then sat on it and really rocked back and forth just to see how easily the joints would fail. They started to wobble easily. A quick rap with a rubber mallet caused the joints to come out easily. This wasn't a scientific experiment, but i believe that that dominos don't hold all that well when shocked like this. In fact, glue in general doesn't hold well when smacked or shocked. That I know. A chair can be vulnerable to this kind of force in normal use if it tips over or gets dropped.
In my experience, a chair benefits from mechanical strength in the form of integral tenons, shoulders, and even screws.
YMMV, but I'm comfortable with my experience on this. You can make your own conclusion.
Last edited by Prashun Patel; 09-07-2021 at 2:35 PM.
Member
Some would call this diversity of opinion but I think it is more nonsense. A domino just makes a mortise. Period. It makes good, smooth sided precisely dimensioned mortises. There is nothing about a domino mortise that is inferior to a mortise made any other way. If you want a tenon thicker than 14mm, plunge multiple times. If you need one deeper than 2 3/4 inches I will have to give you that one but how many projects need mortises deeper than 2 3/4 inches? If you want a mortise wider than a domino makes with that cutter, just plunge multiple times. I've done them over 6 inches wide (for a plywood tenon, not a solid one).
I have 10 chairs I built this year in my dining room. The only joint in the chair that was not made with my domino is the top back rail. It is curved so a straight loose tenon would have come through the surface. So the tenons need to be integral. I could have still done the mortise with my domino but I already had a jig to use my plunge router so that is what I used. All the stretcher joints were make with my domino and have loose tenons. The tenons are the same size as called for in the plans I got from Woodsmith - or a little bigger. The tenons are cherry, the same as almost all the rest of the chair. I have curved spindles in the back that are also joined to the chair with domino mortises although these pieces are not glued (as called for in the plans which assumed traditional mortise and tenon joints). Most but not all the mortises required more than one plunge of the tool to make - they are wider than one plunge of a domino makes. No big deal. Very simple to do.
I sit on my chairs. I have no problem with anybody sitting on these chairs. I am not real heavy, 185, but my son and son in law are both 200+. These chairs do not care. I have similar chairs with ladder backs made before I was aware of a domino that have been used for several decades and work fine. I am very sure the most recent chairs made with domino made mortises will also last decades.
If you have failed domino joints they were either incorrectly sized for the connection or you did not glue them properly. Made and assembled correctly domino joints are no better or worse than other mortise and tenon joints. Because they are just another way to cut these joints. This is repetitive for me to say but I think it is important to emphasize that the fact that dominos only come in certain sizes is not a reason to use smaller mortise and tenon joints and hope for the best. Just spend a very few moments and make some larger loose tenons. Or make a wider mortise and an integral tenon.
Blaming a machine you did not use correctly for a weak joint you made is not going to get you better projects. Learning from your mistakes and doing it right the next time is how you will make progress. Several decades ago when I started I messed up pretty throughly at times. Most but all the projects were salvagable. I still make mistakes. But I don't blame my tools for my mistakes. I try to learn from them and I make fewer than I used to.
It also occurs to me, however that what I think domino joinery is may be different than others are thinking. I am thinking of mortise and tenon joints with at least the mortise cut with the domino tool. If you add in the use of the Festool pre-made tenons, you add opportunities for issues. Like smaller tenons than you really need, either in width or length (primarily due to the 25mm maximum cut depth of the 500). I wonder if the pre-made tenons may sometimes swell up if stored for a long time in a humid environment and limit the glue in the joint making the joint weaker. I don't think how we make the mortise makes the joint weaker and therefore lesser but if the use of this tool causes us to use smaller joints than the project really requires - then that would definitely be a problem. If using swelled up tenons that starve the joint for glue that could be a problem. But I do not see the mortising tool as an issue - especially the 700 model I use. It will cut deep enough tenon length should seldom if ever be an issue.
Last edited by Jim Dwight; 09-07-2021 at 6:23 PM. Reason: Add a thought
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