The Domino Cross Stop Minimizes Pencil Lines and Improves Precision

[ear3]

[member=15289]Birdhunter[/member] Fully agree.  Plus there are additional steps one can take to get that precision when needed.  You can have matching length stock, dead on mortise/domino alignment, but then the clamping pressure can throw something off.  So I now just build slack into my production process for things like door/cabinet panels or canvas stretchers, e.g., I initially build a planned 18" x 32" door frame at 18 1/8" x 32 1/8" or 18 3/16" x 32 3/16".  After glue up I square one corner with the track saw, then cut the rest to final size.  And it's not like you don't have to shave even more off in some cases to fit them to the specific cabinet carcasse.

I use extremely tight tolerances where necessary but not when applications do not need tight tolerances. Very few of my woodworking applications require or benefit from using tight to tight mortises. Using tight to loose mortises requires just a couple of hammer taps to achieve perfect alignment. Less stress fewer bad words!

 

[ReneS]

I know this is an older thread, but I thought I would add something that might be of interest.

I use the tight setting for all of my mortises but I shave off a little bit of the sides of each domino (not the top or bottom). Basically I flatten out the rib on each side.

This gives me something like 1/64 to 1/32 of movement side to side. This is usually more than enough to easily fit joints together and get the desired alignment. This also makes dry fitting much easier.

I don't know whether it provides any real mechanical advantage, but it makes me feel better. And since one of the posters here said they wished there was a setting that was tighter than wide but looser than tight, I thought I would mention this.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Another thing you can do is plunge in both sides of the line, on one of the parts. This gives you a tight and an "almost tight"  [big grin] That variance can be far less than the 3mm that the loose setting will give you.