Crib Problem

[Birdhunter]

A young friend is building a crib for his first baby. He is using my Domino to install vertical slats. The rectangular sections were not a problem. The problem was with the curved sides. We needed to cut the mortises into the curved top rail normal to the bottom rail.

I came up with a solution that worked.

Any guesses?

 

[Shane Holland]

Preferably, cut the mortises before you cut the curve.

Since it's too late for that, you could probably clamp the offcut onto it as a work around. Hopefully, you still have them.

Nice looking crib so far. Post photos of the finish project.

 

[bkharman]

I too would have cut the mortices before I cut the curves.  I also would have put on a sacrificial board to make it square to a table and took it to a drill press and morticed things out.

Curious to your answer!

Cheers.  Bryan.

 

[Birdhunter]

Solution....

The off cut was discarded before I got involved.

We laid out the crib side pieces on a hollow core door and clamped them down. Used a Woodpecker framing square to orient a board normal to the bottom rail lined up so as to center the Domino cutter where the top rail mortise was to go. The board extended from the lower rail past the top of the top curved rail. Set the Domino depth so as to compensate for the depth lost to the top rail curve. Used the side of the Domino fence against the board and cut the mortise. Repeated for each mortise. The bottom rail was just normal Domino work.

The trick was to register the left side of the Domino fence against the right side of the board. The secondary trick was to align the board exactly so as to center the cutter.

 

[Achtepa]

this may apply Curved joints with the Festool Domino 700

 

[Birdhunter]

Thanks. I saw this video some time ago. The problem I was facing was that my friend had already cut out the curved rails and did not have the off cut.

We did mortise the vertical slats before shaping them to fit the curved top rail. I laid the curved top rail over the vertical slats to pencil mark the fit line and then used a band saw to shape them.

 

[flair woodworks]

Either the Hand Rail Attachment, registered off of the convex side, or the bare fence registered off of the concave side would have also worked, I'd guess.

Love the Domino.  I've even cut mortises in twisting chair legs.