Does anyone use Domino tenons as plugs for screws in particleboard?

[Forrest Anderson]

I am repairing and altering an office cabinet which is made of veneered chipboard (particleboard in the USA). The hinges have been screwed into the edge of the door, and particleboard being what it is, the screws have worked loose.

Whilst I could use longer screws with a coarser thread, specifically manufactured for man-made boards, it occurred to me that I could drill out the existing screwhole and glue in a 10mm dowel. I could then drill a pilot hole in the end of the dowel to accept the screw for the hinge. The screw would be going into the dowel's end-grain, but it would likely provide a much better mount for the hinge than screwing into the edge of the raw particleboard.

It then occurred to me that a Domino could be used in the same way, as per the diagram below. Here, the right-hand pilot hole is drilled directly into the chipboard, the centre hole is drilled into a dowel which has previously been glued into the board, and the left-hand one has a Domino.

(The board looks like MDF because I couldn't immediately find a coarser particleboard texture)

I don't have a Domino, but it seems to be quite a good use for one. Has anyone used a Domino for this type of application?

Forrest

 

[Dan Clark]

Forrest,

You may want to do a search.  I believe that's been discussed before.

Regards,

Dan.

 

[Forrest Anderson]

You may want to do a search.  I believe that's been discussed before.

And after doing a search, you're absolutely right! Fred (aka bruegf) in Michigan had that same idea athttp://festoolownersgroup.com/index.php?topic=981.0 and the consensus was that it should work just fine.

I'll get busy with my dowels!

Thanks Dan 

Forrest

 

[greg mann]

Fred may have been first but this is one of those tips that it pays to be reminded of now and then. Thanks, Forrest.

 

[Dave Ronyak]

Although it is more work, you could trim the length of a domino to correspond to the width of your domino mortice and insert your trimmed domino so that cross grain was presented to the screw rather than end grain.  And for panels where one face will not be visible in use, e.g. the underside of a desktop, I'd mortice the domino in from that hidden face to get the desired cross-grain.  I used a variation of this technique several years ago when building hexagonal lamp (commode) tables with each of the side panels itself being a raised panel and frame unit.  To ensure those panels could be secured with screws inserted from the bottom, I embedded birch dowels into the styles before gluing up the panels to make the hexagonal shape.  Thus allowed the screws to be driven through the bottom and into the styles and the cross grain of the dowels.  Dominos would work even better in this application than dowels, and be much faster to install, and would supplant the need for the splines that I used to reinforce the joints between the panels.

Dave R.

 

[Steveo48]

Great idea and presentation Forrest, thanks for bringing it up.

It seems like a great idea but I wouldn't get too worked up about grain position of the domino, after all, it's still going into particle board.  Just get plenty of glue in there, perhaps polyurethane glue to help fill in any voids.

I appreciate it being brought back up too, if it gets buried too deep ideas like this become lost.

Steve
Happy New year ;D