Domino Cross Stops

[Mike Goetzke]

I usually just mark my tenon positions but on my current project thought it was time to learn to use the cross stops. Maybe this was a bad project to try them on - it's a 6' long panel. The mortises were not lined up well at the end of the run. (I watched the Festool video and use the tight position on the first mortise with the 36mm stop on my DF700 and the cross stops on the others.)

Must be my technique. It was hard to get a feel for how hard to pull against the end of the previous mortise. Any help appreciated on how to master these stops.

 

[woodferret]

Tight on first both sides?

 

[rmhinden]

Must be my technique. It was hard to get a feel for how hard to pull against the end of the previous mortise. Any help appreciated on how to master these stops.

When I used them, I position the XL so the pin goes into the previous cut mortice and slide it until it stops.    No excessive force is required.   

One other thing I do if I use all tight mortise setting, is that I use a hand plane to plane a little off the sides of the dominos, this allows for easier alignment but doesn't reduce the strength of the bond.

Bob

 

[ChuckM]

This is how I use the cross stop (see reply #2):
https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/...ion-for-conference-table/msg687402/#msg687402

 

[bobtskutter]

This video on sedgetool may help

regards
bob

 

[Mike Goetzke]

This is how I use the cross stop (see reply #2):
https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/...ion-for-conference-table/msg687402/#msg687402

I read this and this is an issue I have with the cross stops. If you milled all the mortises on the first board on tight setting and the first mortise on the second board on the tight setting and the remainder on the wide setting you will accumulate the error of 1/2 the wider width. The guy that said he did it this way used pencil marks.

After thinking about it my error may have come from dragging the face of the DF700 across the board - the friction may have made my position vary slightly.

 

[rmhinden]

I read this and this is an issue I have with the cross stops. If you milled all the mortises on the first board on tight setting and the first mortise on the second board on the tight setting and the remainder on the wide setting you will accumulate the error of 1/2 the wider width. The guy that said he did it this way used pencil marks.

After thinking about it my error may have come from dragging the face of the DF700 across the board - the friction may have made my position vary slightly.

Assuming I am following what you wrote, I would think that unless you make the mortices on both boards the same width, the centers of the mortices will be in different places.  The pins on the cross stops register on the edge of the mortise, not the center.

Bob

 

[woodferret]

This is why I asked to confirm if the first domino on both sides was tight.  Rest being loose is fine, but if only one side had the tight one, then the other board will always be offset by the loose setting.  Not the end of the world, but eh.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I may in the minority, but as I prefer one side of glue ups to all be tight mortises with the other panel on wide, I'm yet to find my cross stops to be of any use.

 

[Michael Kellough]

I may in the minority, but as I prefer one side of glue ups to all be tight mortises with the other panel on wide, I'm yet to find my cross stops to be of any use.

Same here.

 

[Lincoln]

I like them for referencing off an edge for domino placement - eg. leg to stretcher, or mid-panel mortices etc, but not for referencing off the previous mortice.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I like them for referencing off an edge for domino placement - eg. leg to stretcher, or mid-panel mortices etc, but not for referencing off the previous mortice.

I don't even find them useful for that, as I still need to mark the other mortises it's a just a couple seconds extra to do the ends instead of whipping it out and setting it up. But at $135 I'm just glad they came free with the Domino originally!

 

[ChuckM]

The cross stop and the trim stop are good only for repetitive mortise work. Others just need pencil lines. The pins should be made smaller so the cross stop can be used with 4mm dominoes.

 

[Vtshopdog]

I may in the minority, but as I prefer one side of glue ups to all be tight mortises with the other panel on wide, I'm yet to find my cross stops to be of any use.

Same here.

Me too, they have never found entry into my workflow.

 

[Mike Goetzke]

This is why I asked to confirm if the first domino on both sides was tight.  Rest being loose is fine, but if only one side had the tight one, then the other board will always be offset by the loose setting.  Not the end of the world, but eh.

Yes, I used the pin/flap register on the first mortise on the tight setting for both pieces and then used the cross stop for the remainder in the wider mortise mode.

I'm finding I'm personally more accurate/efficient using pencil marks. Just thought this project would be a good candidate to try out the accessory.

 

[squall_line]

It's probably worth cutting a test cut from the edge of two workpieces, one with each stop, on the narrow setting, and then popping in a test domino to see of the panel edges align.  There is a possibility that one side or the other needs to be adjusted; mine were out enough to cause accumulated error over the course of 4 or 5 mortises left-to-right vs right-to-left.

 

[luvmytoolz]

As many have noted using pencil marks just seems to be way faster and more accurate. If the cross stop came with instead of the pins, an insert perhaps a beesd*ck smaller than the tenons so you could insert it into the mortise, it would make it much more useful.

For practicality you might still need to use the wide setting but any drift, even over very long lengths, would be so minimal it wouldn't matter at all.

 

[Birdhunter]

For me, the cross stops are subject to error stack up. That’s when a slight placement error is magnified with each subsequent measurement.

But, the pin locators on my Mafell dowel machine seems to work well.

 

[ChuckM]

As I see it, the cross stop has two main weaknesses (although the woodworking concept is nice):

#1 and the most serious one, no manual is produced to show how to use it and when to use it. The lack of it discourages owner from using it, or causes users to use it wrongly.

#2, it is made of plastic. Mounted on the machine, esp. the DF700, it can flex under intensive pressure.

I don't blame users who think it's a useless accessory, because even in one official Festool episode featuring the making of a rail and stile door with cross rails, the demonstrator relied on pencil lines instead of the cross stop and trim stop to do all the reptitive mortises. That door could have been made using the cross stop without using pencil lines. As well as the next 3 or 4 or 10 doors. I bet that if the domino joiner manual didn't show how to make the shelf joint, the majority of owners would not know and would not use the machine to make shelves!

P.S. Found this very old vid using the cross stop for breadboard ends:


There shouldn't be any issues as long as one uses the proper tight/loose settings, and be gentle with registering the pin against the mortise wall. Practice on some scraps to get the hang of it.

 

[luvmytoolz]

If I'm doing panels/parts I want particularly tight, I'll do one side all tight, and the other on tight but then plunge again maybe 0.5mm each side of the pencil mark. I find this works really well and gives the fraction of wiggle room you sometimes need due to parallax error.