Hi Everette, I think the Domino would be excellent at edging plywood. I used the Domino to make a plywood drawer box. I found that the 1/2" plywood was kind of thin for the 5mm Domino, but it worked well, never the less. I would think that it would be ideal, for 3/4" or thicker plywood. Below is a post I made on Sawmill Creek a few days ago...
Flashback to last night. My 1-year old, Antonio, busted the front off of one of our kitchen drawers, the night before a bunch of inlaws are coming to visit. It's amazing how cheap they build some tract homes these days- stapled-together, particle board drawer boxes? Come on.
Uh oh, no time to make dovetails, and I don't have dovetailable material any way. Just some 1/2" maple plywood, no baltic birch or solid wood. What to do?
What the heck, I'll see what I can do with the Domino. Wow, I cut all of my mortises in a few minutes, that was fast. I've never made a drawer this quickly, even with a quick-n-dirty drawer lock bit.
What I liked about using the Domino for the drawer:
The joints are tight, square and relatively solid. Not as good as dovetailed, but pretty strong
No set-up time. Did I say this thing is fast?
The 30mm long Dominos fit perfectly, without need of trimming it to length. Because the Domino cuts about 2mm deeper than the 16mm depth setting, the tenons fit flush to the side of the drawer ( drawer is 12.7mm thick + 16mm plunge depth + extra 2mm = 30.7mm total depth). Cool, this made the joints even faster to make.
Other comments:
If I were to do it over again, I would make the front and rear out of 3/4" ply, not 1/2". This is because the 5mm (.2") thick Domino is a little on the thick side for 1/2" material (violates the rule-o-thumb of making the tenon about 1/3 the thickness of the substrate). If I were to go 3/4", I could step up to 6mm (.24") thick Dominos, and be below 1/3 of 3/4". You can stick with 1/2" drawer sides, if you wish.
Another motivator for using 3/4" fronts and rears, is that the Domino's fence won't slide far enough to allow the tenon to be centered in the 1/2" thickness. But, it will allow centering in 3/4" thick material. You can use a spacer between the substrate and the Domino fence, but that's less convenient than the typical plunge-n-go that Domino is famous for.
The Dominos are not ideal in strength for solid drawers, because of the minimal long-grain to long-grain glue surface. Still, the Dominos fit so tightly that I think it's one of the stronger joints, next to dovetails and box joints.
Another thing I'd do differently next time: I'd plunge through the drawer side and front (or back) simultaneously, then plunge deeper in the front (or back), to allow me to use the minimum width mortise setting (matching the width of the Domino). I had used the slightly elongated setting in the drawer front and back, and that ate up a lot of material, leaving less meat between the Dominos.
So, would I use the Domino for drawers in the future? Definitely yes, for shop cabinets, or something that speed matters more than strength. For fine furniture or a custom kitchen, I'll stick to dovetails. But hey, Domino saved the day. Kitchen is put back together in record time, the night before the inlaws arrive.
Todd
