mitered cab doors -1st Domi attempt

[maxrpierce]

Bought the Domino to make mitered cab doors- I am going to start the process tomorrow- Door stock is .875 inches thick, 2 3/4 inches wide -fairly detailed profile-
Question is - any tips or heads ups from anyone who has conquered these-

 

[Lou Miller]

Bought the Domino to make mitered cab doors- I am going to start the process tomorrow- Door stock is .875 inches thick, 2 3/4 inches wide -fairly detailed profile-
Question is - any tips or heads ups from anyone who has conquered these-

Only thing I can offer (as I'm still fairly new to using it and learning as I go myself), is to convert your .875" in thickness to 22 mm. .875" is equal to 22.225mm. So you're not talking about much difference really, certainly not enough to notice at all. The reason I suggest this is that one of the preset stops for the fence height is 22mm. I could be wrong, but you might find that would make things much easier for you.

I prefer to work in Imperial measurements (cause its what I've used the most by far in my life), but I'm finding that using metric when the domino is being used is much much easier.

Just a thought, good luck.

 

[maxrpierce]

Thanks Lou
I need all the input I can get. I appreciate the tip and will use that setting.
Another thought or question is the profile as stated is fairly ornate with a curved section- would you index off the table or make some sort of jig to be able to use the fence. Need to make around 100 doors just looking for tips to make process easier and repeatable
p.s. please save the tip "buy the doors" it is my excuse to buy the Domino

 

[Lou Miller]

Being that I make all of my own doors, I had no intention of telling you to buy them.

As far as specifics, Tezzer (or any of the Ausies here) can probably give you far more tips than I can. Are the backs of the doors flat? If so, index off the back and you don't have to be worried about the curve. I know most of what I've read says to index off the front, or show side. However, as long as all of your thicknesses are the same, It doesn't make any difference. Just remeber to hold the machine firmly in place and you'll be fine. One of the things about the Domino that makes it so nice to use is that the learning curve isn't very steep. Spend a few minutes fooling around with it in scrap, and you'll figure it all out pretty quickly. Its very straight forward.

 

[Tezzer]

Max can you post a pic of the frames you are going to Domi ;D That will give us all a better idea of what your on about 

 

[woodshopdemos]

It should be real easy to do. A hndred doors is 400 joints so make a jig of some sort. Here is how I would proceed. 1) Make a sample corner.  2) take one each of all the Domino tenons and lay one a a time across the joint. You will see pretty quickly where a tenon will fit. The shape on the front is one thing, but you will also have a rabbeted back 3) pencil in where the tenon makes sense.  4) make a little jig to hold the door frame in place...one for left  and one for right. can be real simple; 5) place the Domino and see where it will cut mortise without using the fence...just the base. It probably will be a tad too high.  6) raise the frame holding jig a bit until Domino is at right hgeight 7) make test cut; 8) adjust as neccessary.

  Now this is a lot of words. But I just want to get the idea across that making a jig will lmake sense here

 

[nclemmons]

I've made a couple of picture frames with mitered Domino corners.  They were detaied profiles with rabbits for the the frames.  Here's how I approached it:

- I used the smallest tenons - one per corner
- I made sure the MFT top was clean so I could index off of the top with the Domino
- Material was about 3/4 thick, but the profiles prevented me from indexing off the front face
- Frame thickness was about 1 3/4 inches edge to edge
- I used holddowns to tightly clamp the frame pieces to the table.  I use Jorgensen bench hold-downs
- I overhung the table edge with the Domino so I could get a clean push with no mis-alignment issues
- I backed up the pieces with the MFT clamps, so I had good resistance to the plunge
- I indexed off of the outside points on the corners with the Domino indexing pin
- Two frames were birdseye maple and one was Padauk
- I ended up sanding down the dominos slightly - they fit tightly and I wanted no issues drawing the joints tight

Overall, it was a very simple process and the Dominos make you revisit mitered joints

Good luck -

Neil

 

[maxrpierce]

Thanks for all of your input-
Didn't get to start today, hopefully in the morning.
Neil, John or anyone else- Should I cut one side exact and the mating edge one size larger (mortise)
Sorry but no pictures of the door stock. I feel guilty because I love seeing all of your photos but haven't taken the time to learn how to post any. I have everything needed to except the knowledge and self drive to learn. Maybe that will be my new years resolution... oh wait it is already May
Any way I will let you know how it turns out

 

[woodshopdemos]

I would strive for having tight mortises on both pieces. Two reasons: 1) with proper jigging as I suggested, the fit should be exact and make the tight mortises possible. 2) this is an application where you want a tight snug fit in both dimensions.