5/8 Russian Birch Plywood - Best Joinery Method?

[afish]

Mainly for cost savings on the connectors the dowels are much cheaper .01-.015 each than the dominos .08-.10 and the knock down fasteners are WAAAAY cheaper. So much so that the Dowler pays for itself quickly.  The ixconnect fastener is .40 where the festool is is like 2.40 each.   

 

[Bugsysiegals]

I'd never seen those connectors before.  I suppose the plastic connectors don't have the shear strength and cannot be taken apart but for projects like cabinets they don't get taken apart and moved, at least not in the US ... I heard some do in EU.

 

[afish]

I prefer the mafell over the lamello for a few reason cost of connectors once again and the dowel holes can be drilled easily by a cnc on the face of the panel so that only leaves the holes on the ends to do by hand saving 50% of the work.  A cnc cant do the complicated lamello groove.  Dowels are cheap and strong.  The Hafele ixconnect only requires a small hole for the Allen wrench too which is much smaller than the festool.  Personal use the expensive connectors dont matter much but if you are trying to make money those really cut into the bottom line.

 

[afish]

The 8/60 ixconnect is actually pretty strong by themselves they do have metal inside but never cut it apart to see how much.  I use them with wood dowels anyways.  The dowler drills 2 holes at once so one gets a wood dowel and one gets a ixconnect any mid panel holes are usually just wood only.  Any force that could cause 4 wood dowels and two ixconnects to shear would cause major damage to whatever it is.  The wood dowels can be installed without glue if its something that needs to come apart in the future. If its something that is just being shipped flat the dowels can be glued in and the ixconnect will help pull the joint tight and hold it till the glue sets up for a more permanent system . 

 

[Bugsysiegals]

I'm going to make a music studio bench in the future and wanted to do it out of some nice Maple/Walnut ... if I was to move I'd definitely need to disassemble and figured the Domino connectors would work well.  I'm not sure these dowel connectors are meant for big structure like this and if they are, can they be taken apart and re-used?

 

[afish]

My skillset falls short in the music arena.  I would need more info on what and where the connectors would be used, but as I said the dowels themselves provide extreme strength.  They have 2 models of the doweler one does upto 12mm dowels and the other goes upto 16mm. 

 

[Hurricane Whisperer]

5/8 is sort of an oddball size.  Much easier to find 3/4 (18 mm) at most suppliers around here.

I made my drawer boxes with 3/4 front and back and 1/2 sides.  Both thicknesses were easy to find.  I used dowels.  Domino would work too.  The 3/4 leaves plenty of wall thickness for 3/8" dowels or thick dominoes.  Cut flush with the side, dowels look good.  Made extremely strong drawers for heavy tools.

3/4 also makes it easy to build the cabinet, and you probably have plenty of material left over for the drawer fronts and back.

5/8 might be fine, but I never thought about it since I had to check what was easily available first.

 

[afish]

I dissected one of the 8/60 ix connectors today.  There is some metal but most of it is the cam mechanism. It wouldnt do anything for shear.  If your music bench is free standing (not getting screwed to a wall) the festool connectors would probably be better for that situation and help more with racking forces.  Any type of cabinet that gets attached to a wall like kit cab, bath van, bookshelves, ent cen., etc I have full faith in them when used with dowels. 

 

[Bugsysiegals]

I dissected one of the 8/60 ix connectors today.  There is some metal but most of it is the cam mechanism. It wouldnt do anything for shear.  If your music bench is free standing (not getting screwed to a wall) the festool connectors would probably be better for that situation and help more with racking forces.  Any type of cabinet that gets attached to a wall like kit cab, bath van, bookshelves, ent cen., etc I have full faith in them when used with dowels.

Yea it would be freestanding with hands resting on it while mixing, editing, etc. so it would need to be sturdy and potentially move to another home someday and still remain strong.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[afish]

Yea for that type of project the Festool connectors are probably your best bet as far as knock down.  At the end of the day its still just expanding in the mortise so a desk can be tricky.  Not so much compressive or shear strength issues but you have to consider lateral force such as someone leaning their butt on it.  So based on the design and how open it is that has to be considered since people tend to lean or sit against ("not on" if that makes sense) pieces of furniture like that in a commercial type space. I know you said home music studio.  If your design has a solid back panel or is made of two cabinets with a top across like more like an office desk then you have less worries if you have something more like the photo you have to worry more about racking and if its in an area where people will be lounging against it.  For small projects the festool connectors are fine but when you start needing them by the hundreds it changes things.

 

[Bugsysiegals]

Yeah I get what you're saying.  I'm thinking something similar to this desk would be nice ... not sure if I'd use Domino's or turn the top of the Left leg into a very large tenon and then figure out how to fasten it so it can come apart later.

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[Steve1]

If you want to use a lock mitre bit, you will need to use an MDF zero-clearance fence; then you shouldn't have any problem.  I learnt this from bitter experience.

Andrew

Thank you.  I learned something today.  I had to go to Youtube to figure out what you meant, but now I understand.  Makes sense.