Question on number of dominoes needed, and general layout question

[motorhead9999]

I’m currently making a desktop, a bit new to furniture style projects and this is going to be my first experience using dominoes. The desktop is going to be made out of cabinet grade maple plywood, and is 1.5” thick around the edges. I’m going to put 3/4” solid maple wood around the plywood edges attached via dominoes. My questions are
1) is there a recommended or rule of thumb for how many dominoes you need along the length of a joint? For reference, my longest desk side is 63 inches
2) for each spot along the length, is it fine to use a single domino centered on the 1.5” thickness, or should I use two smaller dominoes at each location, at the top and bottom of the mating face?

And in general:
3) Is it better to have the front length of maple be one continuous piece across the whole of the front of the desk (and thus covering the side maple pieces, or should the point where the two maple pieces be mitered at 45 degrees at the corner?

 

[ChuckM]

1) It's not a structural joint, so roughly 10" to 12" apart between dominoes is fine. So for the 63" piece, I'd also use 6 to 7 tenons. I'd use the tight setting on the desktop and middle setting for the solid edging (with the tight setting on the first mortise for alignment purposes).

2) Single dominoes, roughly centered, will work well.

3) I always use mitered corners for edging on furniture pieces...more work to execute but nicer in presentation.

[attachimg=1]

 

[ear3]

[member=78926]motorhead9999[/member] For a non-structural joint, as [member=57948]ChuckS[/member] said, you can space the dominoes pretty generously at 10" or so.  You don't necessarily even need dominoes to secure a modest hardwood cap like this, but it won't hurt to add them, and will ultimately make it more secure for the longer term.  If you have a router, it can help to make the cap oversize, then rout flush, as opposed to trying to get it just right with the clamp up.

Some janky things can sometimes happen when doing a hardwood cap on plywood, due to differential absorption rates of the plywood layers.  There are even router bits they make that create a slight concave in the face of the plywood so that the edges are tight, though I'm not sure if such a thing exists for 1.5" thickness.  It is still possible to get good results, but you might want to do a test just to see how your clamping setup works.  Even with the larger parallel clamps, they can sometimes bias the clamping pressure unevenly, such that a seam will be visible on one side.  Doing two stacked dominoes may even help even this out, though that would be another thing you could test.  I've generally only used one larger domino in this sort of application.

Since it's maple, any seam will fortunately be pretty simple to fill after the fact, though you may want to prepare a small pile of fine dust to rub and/or sand lightly into the seams immediately after clamping and wiping off the ,major squeeze out.

I’m currently making a desktop, a bit new to furniture style projects and this is going to be my first experience using dominoes. The desktop is going to be made out of cabinet grade maple plywood, and is 1.5” thick around the edges. I’m going to put 3/4 solid maple wood around the plywood edges attached via dominoes. My questions are
1) is there a recommended or rule of thumb for how many dominoes you need along the length of a joint? For reference, my longest desk side is 63 inches
2) for each spot along the length, is it fine to use a single domino centered on the 1.5” thickness, or should I use two smaller dominoes at each location, at the top and bottom of the mating face?

And in general:
3) Is it better to have the front length of maple be one continuous piece across the whole of the front of the desk (and thus covering the side maple pieces, or should the point where the two maple pieces be mitered at 45 degrees at the corner?

 

[motorhead9999]

1) It's not a structural joint, so roughly 10" to 12" apart between dominoes is fine. So for the 63" piece, I'd also use 6 to 7 tenons. I'd use the tight setting on the desktop and middle setting for the solid edging (with the tight setting on the first mortise for alignment purposes).

2) Single dominoes, roughly centered, will work well.

3) I always use mitered corners for edging on furniture pieces...more work to execute but nicer in presentation.

[attachimg=1]

If I do the mitre on the corners, since it’s fairly small (3/4), do I need  to do anything do keep the mitred corners together? Or will the domino alignment and some glue handle keeping those corner faces together?

 

[ChuckM]

If you miter the mating pieces well and mill the two alignment mortises (in the tight setting) properly, the gluing and clamping shouldn't pull the joint apart.

For mitered picture frames or irregularly shaped boxes, I sometimes use this to hold the corners tight while waiting for the glue to cure:https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/supplies/adhesives/tape/70856-3m-binding-tape