Yesterday, while visiting Coastal Tool, I got to paw over a Festool Domino for quite a while.
NICE tool! It has a very high quality feel, smooth action, nice ergonomics. The tenons seem to be of high quality, too. The Domino is expensive, but I can really see 'em getting as popular as biscuit joiners. While I know the Multi-Router can do more, I wonder how many of them get used mostly for mortising, and how the Domino might compare to the MR.
Hmmmmmm... Time to research.
I have been looking at the Domino also, on-line, so you suck. One thing that I have noticed, unless I am mistaken, is that the Domino cannot make compound mortises. I am not sure that you can cut mortises on narrow stock that has been cut off at an angle. Did you find anything contrary to those thoughts???
B A R R Y wrote in news:HZEHh.7787$re4.6129 @newssvr12.news.prodigy.net:
First impression, just on the basis of the math. The Multirouter is about
4x the price of the admittedly not cheap Domino. And not portable, either out of the shop, or to the work.Probably a place for both, in the very-well-stocked woodshop. Not mine, this year, though.
Patriarch
No criminal charges, so you're home free?
I use the MR almost exclusively for mortising. My guess, talking with other MR owners, is that "loose tenon joinery" is high on the list of "most used for" applications on the MR.
Although I have not "pawed" it yet, after reading the literature and seeing what it can do, If I did not have a MR, I would not hesitate to give _serious_ consideration to the Domino for what I do with the MR.
That said, I would NOT trade my MR for one, so forget it. :)
IIRC, and if what I've read is correct, they say that it can. But I've not any first hand experience with it.
Yeah that is what I have heard and what some of the finished projects have suggested however none of the demo videos show this. There is an attachment for holding narrow pieces and if it can be adjusted to an angle I believe compound mortises would be possible. So far that attachment appears to only hold narrow pieces perpendicular to the tool face.
What if you lost it in a card game? Canasta? ;~)
I have this disturbing mental image of you sniffing your hands and cackling. ;)
R
I stopped by the Woodsmith Store and used the Domino Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the Festool expert on staff was not around so three other employees assisted me. I wanted to try the other size cutters besides the 5mm to see how they worked but they could not be found. So I just cut with the 5mm.
Joined boards like a biscuit cutter, as if edge joining for a panel. Made 90 degree joints. Machine is nice and the cuts are very quick.
1 second or so per cut with the 5mm cutter. I could not get the edge joints to line up perfectly 100% flush. Maybe user error. But two of the employees also tried and the edges were not 100% flush. The 5mm tenons allow a little bit of up and down slop. They are tight in their mortises, but there is still a bit of up and down movement allowed. So I could force the edges to align perfectly, but it was not automatic. I plan to go back another day and give it another try to see if I can get the edge joints to be perfectly aligned.I used the setting that cut the mortises the exact width of the tenons. I used pencil marks across the boards to line up the mortises. Easy to cut the mortise exactly where you wanted it. No problems having the mortises line up exactly on the two boards when putting them together. So you don't have to use the wide settings to be sure the mortises line up when edge jointing.
While making the 90 degree butt joints the Domino slipped out of place a bit and the mortises were not lined up too perfectly. I'll attribute that to user error and the fact I was not using the shoe thing they include. And at home I would have mounted the boards in a vise standing up istead of flat on a table and putting the Domino down into the board.
Using the built in pins to move the Domino to the next spot is not perfect. You just don't slide it along and the pin pops in automatically. You have to look and move it to be sure. Minor issue.
Someone asked about compound miters with the Domino. Sure. If you have something on the piece to push the fence against, it will work. It need not be flat surface. A reviewer at Wood magazine was telling me that he used the Domino to build a Mission rocking chair with it. One of the rails on the rocker was curved so he pushed the Domino against two edges and slid it along to cut the mortises. The whole fence was not against the wood. Just the edges inside an arc. I think he was cutting mortises for slats, not the official tenons.
The Domino seems to be a handheld slot mortiser. Similar to the ones that attach to the European jointer/planer combination machines. The Domino can only cut 28mm deep into a surface. So the longest loose tenon is only going to be a bit over 1 inch long. Slot mortisers or the Multi Router are able to make much deeper mortises. This would be useful on certain size furniture pieces. But for most furniture, a 1 inch long tenon is long enough. By moving the Domino along the surface, you can cut mortises as long as you want. And by adjusting the fence height, you can cut mortises as wide/tall as you want. Without much effort you can cut a mortise of about any width and length, but its limited to 28mm deep.
preciousssssss.........
That didn't seem like a problem. Right off the top of my head it seems that you could flip the stock, just like a biscuit joiner.
This might need a quickie jig, again like a biscuit joiner, and it might depend on how narrow the stock is.
I asked a friend of mine to smell my fingers.
Thanks for the details!
Do you think glue would have made a difference in the fit?
FWIW, I'd probably still use my biscuit joiner for panel alignment.
I think I'll stay with my FMT.
It may take a bit longer to set it up, but it always makes perfect mortice and tenons, and they're in the right place too.
For edge gluing boards into a panel, I don't think so. There was enough up and down slop to move the boards up and down a tiny amount. Fractions of a millimeter. But still enough to make the boards to be flush or not flush when running the fingers across them. Maybe I was shaking a bit and the cutter moved up and down a bit to create a 5.1mm slot instead of a 5mm slot. Thus the slight movement. But I doubt it. Or it could have been the edges were not really 90 degrees so when I pushed the Domino fence against them, there was a slight angle to each cut. I just used whatever scrap baltic birch plywood they had on the MFT 1080 table. At home I would of course try to have 90 degree edges to join.
I think this slight(very slight) slop would be one place a dedicated slot mortiser of the Multi Router would have an advantage. You are forced to make your own loose tenons so you would plane them down to an exact piston fit. Whereas the Domino premade loose tenons are not a piston fit. They can get stuck in the mortises and be hard to pull out, but its still not as tight as you could get a loose tenon you plane down yourself. Whether this makes any difference in building furniture, I don't know. And it may be you really don't want a piston fit that does not allow any room for glue.
I have the DeWalt biscuit joiner. But based on one of the videos the Festool Domino site has, I expected the edge gluing of boards into a panel to produce an exact, perfectly flush fit. In one of the "independent" reviewer videos the person is amazed at how perfectly aligned the edges are. I did not achieve this. At least not in a dry fit. By pushing the boards up or down, with the slop, I could get the edges to be perfectly aliigned. I'm not sure how this would work when clamping the boards though. Cauls and wax paper required? I was expecting the Domino to eliminate the need/luxury/reason for a biscuit joiner.
I'll head back to the store sometime in the next month or two and give the Domino another test.
Easy to say as someone who owns one.
I don't think I'd switch, either.
True!
I guess one could make tenons for the Domino, as well. I didn't mean to directly compare the Domino and MR, only to suggest there's a LOT of stuff the Domino can do for 1/3 of the outlay.
I plan on doing the same. At the time, I was in the store for something else, so I didn't have time to take advantage of the demo setup Coastal has in place.
I'm not even in the market for a mortising system, the Domino simply caught my eye.
Does the FMT make mortises in the face of a board?
I think I should have one of them there tool things... but I'm saving for a ShopBot.
I'm wondering if someone's going to come out with a base unit that you can stick a trim router in that would do the same thing.
-Leuf
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