How Would Your Designs and Project Selection Change IF . . .

IF YOU COULD use any joinery you wanted for your next project, rabbets, dados, through dovetails, half blind dovetails, sliding dovetails, mortise and tenon, through mortise and tenon, tenoned triple miter joints, . . . AND make perfect joints - without hours of precise layouts, without an hour of practice joints and test cuts - and almost without any tool set up(s). And let?s say that NONE of the joinery will show - unless you want it to.

HOW would THAT change what your next piece would be and how it would be put together?

Coming at it from another direction - because dovetail jigs make it relatively easy to dovetail a set of drawers or join the sides of a cabinet to its top and bottom with through or half blind dovetails - do you find you use dovetail joinery more often?

Is the only thing that keeps you from using mortise and tenon joints, or loose tenon mortise and tenon joints, the time and skill it takes to make them by hand, or the price tag and the learning curve of the jigs or machines that facilitate making them?

I ask this question because, as a result of getting and using the Festool DOMINO, how I approach designing a project has changed significantly. And it is also changing the projects I?m considering doing.

Here?s an example of how a tool can change your whole approach to things.

To avoid starting my first ?house furniture? project(s), I?m working on something to hide the garbage can and recycling baskets. The quick and dirty method would be to build it like building a redwood fence - 4x4 posts, 2x4 upper and lower rail, with fence boards between them, captured between 1x1 strips - all held together with nails. This requires the upper and lower 2x4 rails to be used with the wide dimension paralleling the ground in order to leave room for the fence boards AND the 1x1 strips on either side of the fence boards.

But the rails would support more weight and be less apt to sag if they were oriented with their narrower face horizontal. However, that wouldn?t leave room for the 1x1s. To capture the fence boards, I could cut dados in the rails for the ends of the fence boards to fit into - but the lower dado would trap water when it rains - and eventually lead to rot.

SO - What If - the fence boards were held between the upper and lower rail - with loose tenons - three per board? At the top of each fence board, the center mortise would be tight and glued, the outer mortises wider than the loose tenon and glued only to the rail, allowing for wood movement while discouraging cupping. On the lower rail, the loose tenons would fit tight in the top of the lower rail and be glued, the corresponding mortises in the bottom of the fence board would be glued only In the middle, the outer mortises being wider to allow for wood movement.

To firm things up a bit, more loose tenon mortise and tenons on the sides of the two ?post end? fence boards to join them to the post. This would help prevent wracking and firm up the corners.

For the gate, why not miter the corners of the frame - and put two loose tenons in each mitered joint? Like the ?fence sections? fill the field with fence boards using the same loose tenon method as the fence sections.

If the fence boards were straight grained CON HEART redwood, with a coat or two of BLO to pop the grain, this thing would look really nice.

Wait a minute - 3 mortises for each end of maybe 20 fence boards, and corresponding mortises in the rails - that alone would be 240 mortises to cut. And that?s not including the mortises for the rails to post joints or the mitered corners for the gate. And half, or better, of those mortises will be in end grain, 120 being on the ends of 6 foot fence boards. Just laying out the mortises will take forever, to say nothing of actually cutting them all.

Never mind.

UNLESS - there were a way to cut all those mortises with the part laying flat - and with only one layout line for every third mortise - the center mortise for each fence board. The rail to post mortises and the mitered corners won?t need ANY layout lines at all. AND What If the mortises could be cut as fast as cutting a biscuit slot?

This sounds like a job for DOMINO MAN! With his trusty metric ruler, a pair of Festool Green and gray SYSTAINERS stacked neatly on, and secured to, his wheeled sidekick ?Dust Extractor? he?s ready to tackle this daunting task and have the job done in an hour - or two (excluding glue up and clamping time - after all, he is only human. albeit an Empowered one).

Maybe I should design a super hero suit for this woodworking super hero. Hmmmmm - Norms already got plaid, and Roy has the funny hat and suspenders copyrighted. Maybe a gray shop frock, a pocket protector with 0.5mm mechanical pencil and a place for the 100 mm stainless steel metric mini ruler - and safety glasses - with Festool Green frames - a hint of a German accent perhaps. . .

But I digress - as usual.

Back to my original question - How would your designs and the projects you select change if you had a tool which allowed you to do The Hard Part without having to do a lot of layout out, tool set up, test cuts, etc.?

charlie b

ps - If you think the Flip and Slide and Rotate and Rearrange Game of stock selection and orientation is fun for a pair of cabinet doors - try it with 5 to 7 boards - six feet long - and do it three times.

Reply to
charlieb
Loading thread data ...

BTW ... picked up new woodworking mags last night for the first time in a couple of months and all were full of multiple ad's for "the DOMINO".

It's certainly appears to be a foregone conclusion that it will have a revolutionary impact for making furniture in the home shoppe.

AAMOF, there will soon be a new furniture "period" classification: "The Early 21st Century Domino Period".

:)

Reply to
Swingman

| This sounds like a job for DOMINO MAN! With his trusty metric | ruler, a pair of Festool Green and gray SYSTAINERS stacked neatly | on, and secured to, his wheeled sidekick "Dust Extractor" he's | ready to tackle this daunting task and have the job done in an hour | - or two (excluding glue up and clamping time - after all, he is | only human. albeit an Empowered one).

Good grief! This can only be an imposter.

What have you done with the real charlieb who so admired the elegance of complex antique Chinese joinery and on-the-fly decision-making of neandertool artists?

Green and grey systainers? Next we'll be hearing about stackable IKEA tooltainers!

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

formatting link

Reply to
Morris Dovey

I don't think the design would change so much as the method of attaching the pieces together. Like you I have entered the Domino Zone.

I'm still enjoying the "New Car Smell" the combination of the Domino and CT22 emit. It really smells like a new car, at least an Accord.

I have built quite a few fences in my days, do you have a drawing of the one you described? Of course you do. Would you post it? ;~) I'd like to see how that 1x1 comes in. Yeah I have a drawing of how I build them also.

Reply to
Leon

A Good One Morris. I was thinking along similar lines.

Charley

Reply to
Charley

It doesn't really do anything new for the home shop, it just makes an already routine task easier. There's nothing too revolutionary about that IMO.

Reply to
Brian Henderson

So you routinely use loose tennons?

Reply to
Leon

You're either one helluva woodworker, or you haven't done much compound angled M&T joinery.

If it's the former, where can we see some of your work?

Reply to
Swingman

He is apparently the type of bait that draws me. I cannot help but respond to the this troll as much as I resist.

Reply to
Leon

Sun, Jun 10, 2007, 7:09am (EDT-3) snipped-for-privacy@accesscom.com (charlieb) calls for fairey tales with: IF YOU COULD use any joinery you wanted for your next project,

Well, as long as we're talking fairey tales here - IF I could use any type of joinery I wanted for my next project, THAT would assume that I would also have the space to work in. Accordingly, the joinery would be welding, and the project would be my long delayed vehicle project. BUT, seeing as I do NOT have the space at this time, it ain't happening, yet.

It will have a wood dash when it does happen - probably plywood, stained. The engine compartment and trunk interior will probably be painted yellow.

JOAT If a man does his best, what else is there?

- General George S. Patton

Reply to
J T

Let's get redy to RUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Go get him swingman.

Reply to
Neil Larson

Hey, if they had this tool I'm sure chinese furniture makers would have used it - and probably in ways we can't imagine. Triple mitered corners - with integral mortise and tenons is a very common chinese joint. The DOMINO brings triple mitered corners into my joinery choices list.

And the DOMINO is a handtool - though "tailed" - and can be used when "designing on the fly" since loose tenon joinery self aligns parts and allows you to measure directly from what I've got at each point along the way. In this "enclosure" project, I had to have the upper and lower rails joined to the end posts in order to find the exact height of the "fence boards" that must fit between them.

Posted two images to a.b.p.w.

Being able to calculate offsets rather than having to measure them sure is handy.

======================================

Brian Henders> It doesn't really do anything new for the home shop, it just makes an

Having cut mortise and tenon joints with handtools and having done a fair amount of loose tenon mortise and tenon joints with a router and jig, dedicated chisel and bit mortiser and a horizontal boring/ mortiser with XYZ table - "it just makes an already routine task easier" is grossly understating what this thing does. Would you even consider a project with well over 200 mortises to cut, with half of them in end grain - on parts 6 feet long?

What the DOMINO contributes to your options is the ability to use loose tenon joints - in four different sizes - with almost no grunt work.

charlie b

Reply to
charlieb

I'm inspired sufficiently that I will wear my Festool tee shirt today.

Reply to
ROY!

Oh! You have a Festool T-shirt???

Reply to
Leon

Yep, and I got it when I purchased a barbrcue grill during 'Vendor Days' at my local hardware/tool store. I got squat when I bought the Domino. Go figure.

Reply to
ROY!

Yup. Easy to do with a router table, imagine what you could do with a multi-router. :)

Reply to
Brian Henderson

There is no bait, it's just an opinion. It's really funny how every piece of new equipment out there draws out the fanatical early adopters who want to use it, not because it's better, but because it's new.

Just being new doesn't make it good. Sure, the Domino might make a somewhat tedious task easier but it doesn't mean that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Reply to
Brian Henderson

Makes sense ... if you swallowed the Domino lure, you're already hooked and all they have to do is reel you in whenever they feel the need to shore up the bottom line. ;)

Hell, they're so slick/insidious that they have guys who actually bring Domino's to your house in social situations so you can fondle them, and guys who spend all day doing nothing but coming up with ways to use the Domino, then writing about it.

Beware ...

Reply to
Swingman

Riiiiiight

Reply to
Leon

Sure, the Domino might make a

Yes it does.

Reply to
Leon

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.