Brad Olson
08-30-2007, 1:20 AM
First, thanks to the members who answered many of my questions regarding a Domino Purchase.
I ended up purchasing the Festool Domino with the Trim and Cross Stops and the Domino starter systainer.
http://www.thegaloot.org/forumimages/Domino/FestoolDomino.jpg
I purchased this from Bob Marino, and am extremely pleased with the service I got from him. I investigated a total of 5 dealers before buying from Bob. The big deciding factor was that he had what I needed in stock and would ship the same day as the order and most importantly, he answered all of my email questions within a few minutes of sending them. Several dealers took 1-2 days to respond to my inquiries and when you are dropping close to $1000 on a tool I expect better service.
My big question was regarding the Festool vacuums.
I decided after about 2 weeks of contemplation, that I really wasn't prepared to drop $300-500 for a vacuum that would only add marginal improvements over my ShopVac with a cleanstream filter and bag. Yes the Festool vac is far superior, but for my needs it isn't $500 more superior (to me the CT22 plus hose garage seemed to be the best value out of their vacs).
So what did I do instead? I purchased a 1", 16' Festool hose to plug into my existing shopvac and then I purchased the $20 Sears Craftsman Autoswitch (http://www.sears.com/shc/s/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10153&catalogId=12605&partNumber=00924031000P). For $140, I figured this would be a good compromise since the thing I only really wanted from a Festool vac was the tool trigger. It did have some other nice features, but to my eye for the moment it did not add up to $500 more in features.
So my initial impressions?
Systainers are great. I am extremely disorganized and I love having tool cases. Even better when they have a place for all the do-dads. Snapping them all together is great for my OCD side.
The machine is EXTREMELY well built and EXTREMELY well designed. Compared to my other PC, Dewalt and Panasonic tools this thing takes the cake. Most of this is in the small little design elements such as quick release levers on all the adjusters, positive ball bearing stops on the fence. The indexing pins are a thing of genius. No measuring or marking and you can pop out perfectly aligned mortises. The trim and cross stops are a bit hokey, but the domino itself has places that accept these additional add ons. I don't know if these will ever be useful, but I figured I get them now rather than need them later.
Initial use trials
I had some small bits of cherry scrap and I figured I would just scratch out the joints that would be required to build an end table (later I will give it an acid test with a real end table). I hacked out all the domino joints required for a table in about 10 minutes. The dominoes fit very well (even considering the RH right now is near 100%) and no glue was required to hold my scratch assembly together. The best part is that everything aligned perfectly and I had a perfect plane on the top where the table top would go. No measuring or marking was ever done.
Initial strength. I glued up one of the joints with two 5X30 dominoes, let it cure for 30 min in clamps, 30 minutes without and then beat it with a hammer. Result? MUCH stronger than a biscuit (BTDT). Seems to be on par with a true floating tenon and definitely weaker than a drawbored M&T. I was extremely skeptical about this since I STILL see plans in magazines for coffee tables with double biscuit joints to the legs. I have tried this twice (following a plan to the T) and in both cases at least one of the joints failed in use. While this is in no way scientific, after assembly of the test joint, I feel no problem using a domino instead of a traditional M&T. The only thing I would hesitate on is in places where I would need the strength of a drawbored joint to prevent racking.
Dust extraction. Near perfect and MUCH better than my former Dewalt biscuit jointer. There was no shaving left on the bench period even using my shop vac instead of the festool vacs.
Overall impressions. Exactly 20 minutes after taking this out to my shop, I had all the joints made that would be required for a small end table (albeit in scrap ugly cherry). I also have done this previously by hand or by using a hollow chisel mortiser and tenon jig. Since the domino requires only seconds of set up time it is vastly quicker than the old way which requires lots of fiddling and trimming. In fact I own $400 worth of hand tools specifically to trim and individually fit M&T joints so from this perspective I am very happy. And the best part is no residual dust from the tenon jig sitting on the floor or a huge pile of shavings to clean up.
Now to the big question, is it worth it? So far yes, but I will report back later. I personally do think that festool stuff is overpriced. But with that extra price you are guaranteed to get an extremely nice tool. Festool meets this demand and after making my first joints I am very impressed and a lot of my apprehension has worn off.
Now a final comment. The domino is making a lot of noise. However, early on I built a router jig to make floating tenon joints quickly. With a bit of improvement there is no reason why the domino is better than this approach. If you are on a budget, but some metric router bits corresponding to the domino sizes and build a mortise jig for you router and buy dominoes. The dominoes are so cheap and well machined that they are worth it. I would consider this a fair compromise for those wanting the speed of the domino without the $$ to buy the machine.
Anyway, I am looking forward to hacking out a few projects with this tool. So far it is quite nice to use.
I ended up purchasing the Festool Domino with the Trim and Cross Stops and the Domino starter systainer.
http://www.thegaloot.org/forumimages/Domino/FestoolDomino.jpg
I purchased this from Bob Marino, and am extremely pleased with the service I got from him. I investigated a total of 5 dealers before buying from Bob. The big deciding factor was that he had what I needed in stock and would ship the same day as the order and most importantly, he answered all of my email questions within a few minutes of sending them. Several dealers took 1-2 days to respond to my inquiries and when you are dropping close to $1000 on a tool I expect better service.
My big question was regarding the Festool vacuums.
I decided after about 2 weeks of contemplation, that I really wasn't prepared to drop $300-500 for a vacuum that would only add marginal improvements over my ShopVac with a cleanstream filter and bag. Yes the Festool vac is far superior, but for my needs it isn't $500 more superior (to me the CT22 plus hose garage seemed to be the best value out of their vacs).
So what did I do instead? I purchased a 1", 16' Festool hose to plug into my existing shopvac and then I purchased the $20 Sears Craftsman Autoswitch (http://www.sears.com/shc/s/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10153&catalogId=12605&partNumber=00924031000P). For $140, I figured this would be a good compromise since the thing I only really wanted from a Festool vac was the tool trigger. It did have some other nice features, but to my eye for the moment it did not add up to $500 more in features.
So my initial impressions?
Systainers are great. I am extremely disorganized and I love having tool cases. Even better when they have a place for all the do-dads. Snapping them all together is great for my OCD side.
The machine is EXTREMELY well built and EXTREMELY well designed. Compared to my other PC, Dewalt and Panasonic tools this thing takes the cake. Most of this is in the small little design elements such as quick release levers on all the adjusters, positive ball bearing stops on the fence. The indexing pins are a thing of genius. No measuring or marking and you can pop out perfectly aligned mortises. The trim and cross stops are a bit hokey, but the domino itself has places that accept these additional add ons. I don't know if these will ever be useful, but I figured I get them now rather than need them later.
Initial use trials
I had some small bits of cherry scrap and I figured I would just scratch out the joints that would be required to build an end table (later I will give it an acid test with a real end table). I hacked out all the domino joints required for a table in about 10 minutes. The dominoes fit very well (even considering the RH right now is near 100%) and no glue was required to hold my scratch assembly together. The best part is that everything aligned perfectly and I had a perfect plane on the top where the table top would go. No measuring or marking was ever done.
Initial strength. I glued up one of the joints with two 5X30 dominoes, let it cure for 30 min in clamps, 30 minutes without and then beat it with a hammer. Result? MUCH stronger than a biscuit (BTDT). Seems to be on par with a true floating tenon and definitely weaker than a drawbored M&T. I was extremely skeptical about this since I STILL see plans in magazines for coffee tables with double biscuit joints to the legs. I have tried this twice (following a plan to the T) and in both cases at least one of the joints failed in use. While this is in no way scientific, after assembly of the test joint, I feel no problem using a domino instead of a traditional M&T. The only thing I would hesitate on is in places where I would need the strength of a drawbored joint to prevent racking.
Dust extraction. Near perfect and MUCH better than my former Dewalt biscuit jointer. There was no shaving left on the bench period even using my shop vac instead of the festool vacs.
Overall impressions. Exactly 20 minutes after taking this out to my shop, I had all the joints made that would be required for a small end table (albeit in scrap ugly cherry). I also have done this previously by hand or by using a hollow chisel mortiser and tenon jig. Since the domino requires only seconds of set up time it is vastly quicker than the old way which requires lots of fiddling and trimming. In fact I own $400 worth of hand tools specifically to trim and individually fit M&T joints so from this perspective I am very happy. And the best part is no residual dust from the tenon jig sitting on the floor or a huge pile of shavings to clean up.
Now to the big question, is it worth it? So far yes, but I will report back later. I personally do think that festool stuff is overpriced. But with that extra price you are guaranteed to get an extremely nice tool. Festool meets this demand and after making my first joints I am very impressed and a lot of my apprehension has worn off.
Now a final comment. The domino is making a lot of noise. However, early on I built a router jig to make floating tenon joints quickly. With a bit of improvement there is no reason why the domino is better than this approach. If you are on a budget, but some metric router bits corresponding to the domino sizes and build a mortise jig for you router and buy dominoes. The dominoes are so cheap and well machined that they are worth it. I would consider this a fair compromise for those wanting the speed of the domino without the $$ to buy the machine.
Anyway, I am looking forward to hacking out a few projects with this tool. So far it is quite nice to use.