Thread: Deciding on a Domino

I've had the 500 for quite a few years now and I'm a weekend hobbyist. It helps me with time as I don't get a lot of weekends to make sawdust. It also adds to the accuracy of my builds and I need all the help I can get.
I also make my own dominoes at the 10mm thickness and for the widest setting, so nearly twice as wide as the standard, This way I can use it on larger builds - more surface area.

I've recently bought a 700 for larger stuff. I've been putting it off for years but they aint getting any cheaper and they never seem to come up 2nd hand. The advice from carbatec was to get the 500 bit adaptor for the 700 and sell the 500. I decided to keep the 500 as it's easier to handle for small jobs. The 700 is a beast. Given that though, if you want to cover all sizes and only have one buying chance, the 700 with the 500 bit adaptor may be the go. Best to try them and see what you prefer. I also make the 14mm x 140mm dominoes as they aren't cheap either, especially when you use a heap on a single build. I like making them as I always have left over pieces that would otherwise end up as kindling.

Dust extraction with some sort of shop vac is a must, otherwise the bit can drift and the hole can be oversized or not correctly positioned.

I suppose the advice from me is if you can afford one, get one. I don't even know where my biscuit joiner is.

PS. I do most of my weekend woodwork in Clunes, just north of Ballarat. If you can't get to test one out, let me know if you're down this way and you can have a go at both of mine with a cuppa and I'll even get some biscuits (edible ones not beech).

Cheers

Bryan

Thanks again everyone, I’m decided that I’m gonna risk my testies and buy one with the additional kit of bits/dominii. As usual it’s a tossup between small and big but I think given the money and type of work I do it’s the 500.
thanks to Bryan for the test drive offer also.

Back at #3 Frank mentioned “outdoor” dominoes, does anyone know about them or Frank, are you there?

Originally Posted by AndrewPatrol

Back at #3 Frank mentioned “outdoor” dominoes, does anyone know about them or Frank, are you there?

There are two types available, beech which would be for indoors and hardwood which is Mahogany from memory for outdoors

Yep DJ's Timber is right, outdoor ones are mahogany

Yes.

This is the answer you are seeking from post #1.....


I've a 500. Best tool ever. Up until I acquired a few Veritas planes (which also share Best Tool Ever status) I would have said the very BTE was my thickness sander.

The 500 is incredible. I made cute tables and chairs for a posh kids toy chain on demand-commish. I could bang out 2 little MDF-topped pine tables and 8 little pine chairs in a DAY with this. I subsequently went from spending 80% of my time on joinery to spending 80% on material preparation.... it turned the job dynamic COMPLETELY around.


The dominos are cheap when they are bought by the Box. Each box has a few bags within. I used to agonise over the material cost of these when I started, but after I sat down and worked it all out these inputs were quite meaningless.

Now, if one WERE to agonise over these costs, the dominos are trivial to make. I made a few out of hardwood fence palings. It too no time to rip them to width, sand them flat, route the edges on the rods, then chop them length. I kept a few palings in the sun just for this. The sun dried the palings out in no time flat plus dried them to Egyptian-mummy moisture levels...

The only thing after this was to boop the edges a bit on a sander/belt to chamfer the ends. This helped pop them in.

The palings cost $2 each and made many dozens.


You know, the ONLY thing I could never get right was the amount of glue to put into those holes! I always had squeeze out!

Here are two MUST READ Domino booklets.

Festool Domino Instruction Usage.pdf

Domino_DF_500_Supplemental.pdf


edit: This magnificent masterpiece of a PDF .... "Getting the most from the Domino" - by Jerry Work .... but I have a copy should this link ever die. The forum limits PDFs to ~5MB... this is ~8 ..... Enjoy!

Originally Posted by AndrewPatrol

Thanks again everyone, I’m decided that I’m gonna risk my testies and buy one with the additional kit of bits/dominii. As usual it’s a tossup between small and big but I think given the money and type of work I do it’s the 500.
thanks to Bryan for the test drive offer also.

Back at #3 Frank mentioned “outdoor” dominoes, does anyone know about them or Frank, are you there?

Just to throw spanner in the works... if you want to, check out Lamello Zeta P2. its good if you do a lot of sheet goods..

I have owned it but to me it is not as versatile as the Domino.... but your case maybe different. just FYI..

Cheers.

Originally Posted by mattocks

... I have heard some fine furniture makers say its not accurate enough for them. ...

I haven't heard this specific grumble, Frank. The main grumbles that I have heard are:

• It is not real mortice and tennon joinery. Its not, its loose tennon joinery, but given the quality of modern glues it is probably at least as strong,
• The tennons do not fill the mortices properly. True, the mortices normally are a little wider than the tennons to allow some lateral wriggle room. And the flat cheeks give a lot of glue surface, and
• you cannot do through mortices.

The Lamello is a beautifully made tool but, in my opinion, it and its clones have been left behind by the Domino.

The Domino saves a lot of time very quickly and it enhances quality (for me, at least!). How much time saved to justify the 500's price of around $1,750? The bigger 700 costs 50% more but feels more rugged and fits my hand size better. Both are great.

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

• The tennons do not fill the mortices properly. True, the mortices normally are a little wider than the tennons to allow some lateral wriggle room. And the flat cheeks give a lot of glue surface.

The fit depends on the settings chosen of course and if the tight settings are used then there is no air space around the Domino aka tennon. My son uses mine more than me and he dismissed the wider settings as unnecessary if care is taken but then he has OCD as well when he does woodworking.

A few years ago, we did an enormous fitout of a horse stud , stables, offices, the whole lot. One of the jobs was to build two sets of massive doors for each end of the stable shed, tall enough for a horse and mounted rider to pass through, I think they were 3700 high and about 1200 wide, and 80 mm thick. with timber v joint infill panels. They were made out of merbau and were outrageously heavy ( think forklift heavy). The old man wanted to make them the normal way with double tenons and such, but I suggested we try a double row of domino’s and so we made a test joint out of 300 x 80 and put two rows of 4 domino’s and glued it with epoxy. Then we took it to an engineering place and they put it in a press on the diagonal to test the strength, it snapped the timber after “about 1500 kgs” of pressure. So we made the doors with domino’s and saved about 20 hours of labour and machining and as far as I know they are still standing. Nothing wrong with domino joints.

surely china has a knock off version by now that can be sourced on the cheap

Originally Posted by havabeer69

surely china has a knock off version by now that can be sourced on the cheap

The Festool patents have not yet expired.

I was indecisive whether to buy a domino or not. It was a big investment and I was relatively new to woodworking at the time. I ended up getting a almost new used domino with the extra systainer with cutters etc. That was over 10 years ago now and it’s been amazing to own.

Festool resale value is also very good. I’ve seen some outrageous eBay auctions where dominos of the same year/age of mine go for more than what they were back then.

In saying that the domino is known to have fence drift from some users. A company called Seneca saw an opportunity to make what’s called a domiplate. If you look it up it speaks for itself.

It seems crazy that you spend big money on a machine and you need to buy an aftermarket accessory. I never really had major issues but there’s other benefits such as more fence registration. I ended up getting one last year when they were on sale.

The other thing is you need to hook it up to a shop vac otherwise you’ll block it up.

Originally Posted by havabeer69

surely china has a knock off version by now that can be sourced on the cheap

They certainly do. I had a play with one when I was in China two years ago - apart from colour, it looked and felt remarkably like a Domino 500.

I still regret not buying; airline weight restrictions are so limitting, or expen$ive! A cute little "Festool CXS" drill lookalike was under $100, as a complete set in an orange systainer.

But I have never seen or heard of them outside China - patent protection would prevent import into most countries.