How to Mark Center Cross Member Butt Joints to get Perfect Alignment with DF 500

[ThisVeteranVlog]

Greetings fellow festoolers!

After picking up a DF500 from a two year break from woodworking, I have made many projects with it in the last few months. Recently, I have been redoing all of my oldest daughters furniture in her room; 16 drawer modular bed, bookshelf, desk, wall shelf and a floating night stand. I used lots and lots of butt joints with the Domino, and occasionally would foul up the plunge location and not discover the issue until the dry fit. I even had to toss out a carcass for the bed project because of how messed up the alignment was on the bed project. An expensive mistake when it comes to 18mm 11 ply baltic birch.

In most of the center shelf butt joint videos I've seen, it was merely a demo unit with only one end of the center shelf being shown on how to plunge the two pieces for a successful butt joint. I've yet to come across a video that shows doing both sides, much less a good way of marking everything to line up the face grains as references.

After doing some thinking, I came up with a method of marking a workpiece that uses one or multiple center shelves or some type of center cross member. I made a video showing the process in my first (and currently only) You Tube video to get error free center members.

Thanks for looking and I hope this helps some of the other DF 500 newbies out there.

https: //youtu.be/vvFLDYaOAUo

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How to Make Perfect Butt Joints with Festool Domino

 

[Mario Turcot]

It's easy to mess up with such assembly, having a surface to lay down the pieces is a good thing. I notice that you did the plunge on both pieces with tight mortice. You may want to give you some play just in case using the mid mortice adjustment.

Thanks for the video, it was informative  [thumbs up]

 

[ThisVeteranVlog]

It's easy to mess up with such assembly, having a surface to lay down the pieces is a good thing. I notice that you did the plunge on both pieces with tight mortice. You may want to give you some play just in case using the mid mortice adjustment.

Thanks for the video, it was informative  [thumbs up]

Mario,

Spot on with both plunges being tight mortise, and yes only one should be tight to ease with assembly! One of these days I'll get that part down  ;D I like to think that despite my projects, I'm the one that's always a work in progress  [laughing] [laughing] Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Mario Turcot]

You are not the only one, I do the same too often. The most important I believe is to be consistent with your methods. Take the time to setup the two pieces like you do and plunge the DF 500 slowly. Also pull out the tool slowly to help with removing most saw dust from the mortice.

 

[ChuckM]

There're two ways to tip the board --with the bottom face up as shown in the above video (view from 1:00), or with the top face up. Refer to the manual (making carcase butt joints) for details.

 

[ThisVeteranVlog]

There're two ways to tip the board --with the bottom face up as shown in the above video (view from 1:00), or with the top face up. Refer to the manual (making carcase butt joints) for details.

Yep, I've checked the manual as well. I had not seen this video before, and appreciate the share! I'm more referring to a way of marking the whole piece prior to cutting any mortises. Pieces can get mixed up very easily and errors are introduced with more joinery that's need in a project.

I'm preaching to the choir here about marking before making cuts, joinery, etc. If the gent in the video had multiple shelves to join at once, I would hope he marked them to prevent mixing up pieces and plunging on the the wrong side of his guide line - of which I've done numerous times  [laughing]

 

[ChuckM]

Hi Ben, Regardless of the type of project or size, I always use the  cabinetmaker's triangles to mark everything once the stock is dimensioned. Those marks are kept until the glue-up is completed and ready for finishing.

 

[ThisVeteranVlog]

Hi Ben, Regardless of the type of project or size, I always use the  cabinetmaker's triangles to mark everything once the stock is dimensioned. Those marks are kept until the glue-up is completed and ready for finishing.

Yep, marking in any method is essential in woodworking, saves so many headaches!