Thread: Deciding on a Domino

Originally Posted by groeneaj

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.

Fence drift was on the older models. I've just bought one and I read on the Festool Owners forum some users have done over 20,000 mortices and not had any. I also bought the domiplate not because of fence drift but because I think its easier to use.

I got caught out one weekend - ran ou of dominos - so I made my own. Just ripped and thicknessed some timber strips to size, rounded the edges with a bullnose bit on the router table, and then cut to length. Very quick and easy if you tape the strips together and thus cut off six dominos at a time.

Originally Posted by Greg Q

... While I used festool genuine dominoes almost exclusively, I want to try cutting a wider mortice using multiple plunges, then making a custom domino to suit for certain applications. I am having some moulder cutters made up, might ask them about a special able to cut any of the larger dominos.

There was a debate about this on another forum quite some time ago - possibly FOG - involving some very technical engineering type analysis. It seems that multiple "regular" dominos may actually be stronger than a single elongated custom one. Certainly easier.

Yes, it certainly is easier to do multiples. I was thinking about an upcoming gate project that with conventional joinery would have stout pegged tenons. On my internal doors I just bit the bullet and used about $25 in dominoes for each one. They are fine so far.

I have had the smaller one for a few years now. It is a great tool but hardly use it. I’m seriously considering selling it and a large number of dominoes to fund other tool purchases that I will use.

A few years ago, we had a job making some enormous doors for a horse racing stable, from merbau. The old man wanted to do double mortise and tenon joints but I suggested a double row of dominoes, the largest ones. So we made up a sample joint out of 190 x 45 and glued it with two rows of four dominoes with epoxy. The timbers were about 1 metre long. We took this sample to an engineering place in Newcastle and they put it in a press to try and break the joint, it needed almost EIGHT TONNES Of pressure before failing. Nothing wrong with domino joints.

What failed, RB - the timber, the glue or the dominos?

i posted this in another thread (about dodgy knock off scam sites) but you can look at this instead of the domino

Tianli Handheld Mortiser Domino Jig Router Mortise Jig for Makita trim router | eBay

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

What failed, RB - the timber, the glue or the dominos?

From memory, the timber let go away from the glue line and then the dominos sheared off.

This reminds me of how FANTASTICALLY strong timber is.

Imagine one of those titanic gums - the weight in those branches must be unreal.

All of that must withstand the torments of wind, storm and pelting rain.

Its mind boggling.