Ping Swingman & J.Clarke

[Leon]

Swingman, a few weeks ago you were asking how well the Domino could elongate a mortise. Your concern was whether the hole would be ragged. My answer the hole would not be ragged.

Here is an 8mm wide mortise by approximately 2" long. I placed a center plunge and followed left and right from center to get 2" wide. This is through MDO with Fir inner plys, 3/4" thick.

This is the through cut on the bottom side. I used no backer to prevent tear out on the exit side.

J.Clark, Just something else that I do with the Domino. This is a counter sunk slot to accept a 5/16" bolt and washer. I need for the bolt to slide in the slot. The bolt/bolts will attach this and another

75" long piece to the head and foot boards on the bed that I am currently building.

Pretty much impossible on a traditional mortiser as the piece is approximately 18" x 75". This is at the end of the 75". A router jig probably would have been a little quicker but I would have had to build a jig. ;~)

[Swingman]

Cool ... thanks!

[Leon]

Just a note on the exit side of the cut. This is going through MDO and this stuff is pretty resistant to tear out to begin with. Plywood with thin outer veneers might not do as well.

[DerbyDad03]

Having no clue how the device works, this may be a dumb question:

How hard would it be to do shallow cuts from both sides and have everything line up perfectly?

Obviously (?) a backer board would be easier, I'm just curious about the ability to perfectly line up 2 "opposing" cuts.

[Leon]

If you have or have used a DwWalt, PC, or similar biscuit joiner you pretty much know how the Domino works. Instead of plunging a spinning blade the Domino plunges a spinning and oscillating bit. The results of the cut however are much much much more accurately placed and clean cut.

Not hard at all assuming the Domino is always in perfect registration in regards to left and right oscillation of the bit. The face of the Domino has indexing pins and in a perfect world the bit will cut perfectly in the center between them. One of two pins is adjustable but since the vast majority of my cuts do not exit on the opposite side I do not depend on the indexing pins.

Concerning the alignment of the mortise from the edge on both sides there is no problem at all. The tricky part would be the alignment of one end of the mortise to the other end, FOR PERFECTION.

When using the Domino as intended I use a perfect sized mortise on the end grain and the slightly longer mortise setting on the mating edge.

[DerbyDad03]

Yeah, after I posted I Googled the Domino and figured it out. It's a little scary watching that bit spin and move back and forth in that open space. I'll have to remember not to wear my favorite string tie if I get a chance to use one of those machines. ;-)

BTW that site was where I came across the video of the guy staining the edge of the stile after assembly. He was singing the praises of the Domino in the video. Just prior to the 2:00 staining incident, he mentioned that he did 85 tenons in about 1.5 hours.

[Leon]

Yeah don't do that. LOL. With the smaller Domino, mine, I have had plenty of opportunity to hurt myself and have not once. ;~)

Yeah? He was going a little slow, that is a mortise about every 2 minutes. But if he was counting time to mark locations and clamp the work that might be about right. Remember there are two cut/mortises for each tenon, so 170 mortises. With a traditional mortiser that may have been closer to a couple of days.

[J. Clarke]

It's very easy. You can use the built in stops to set the mortise a fixed distance from an edge or another mortise, you can line up on a pencil mark (the mark doesn't have to the center--the fence has graduation marks and three triangular windows for that purpose), or you can use a stop block. Those are methods that occur to me off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.