Under sized dominos

[Dave Ronyak]

I am getting quite quick at running off a bucket of dominos, and they are the size I want them to be. I do find that in the very dense hardwoods if you plunge too fast the mortise will be over size.

Gerry

Do you think that may be due to excessive vibration being introduced in the bit due to the rapid plunge?  I had great difficulty inserting the 5MM dominos supplied when Festool first introduced this product.  They subsequently reduced the dimensions of the 5mm dominos and packaged the reduced sized ones under a new Item number.  I live in NE Ohio where it gets quite humid during summer and rather dry during the deep of winter due to gas fired forced air heat in my shop.  Yet even in winter I find myself lightly sanding the sides and edges of 5mm dominos to allow insertion with slight friction.  I have used more than one new 5mm Festool bit and had the same fitment experience.  In contrast, 8mm and 10mm dominos are from a tight slip fit to a rather loose fit.  All of my comments are with respect to dry fitment of dominos in hardwoods, mostly red oak.

Dave R.

 

[Kevin D.]

I'm reading a few comments about how some folks make their own Dominos.  Can anybody point me in the direction of a past thread on "How To" do this.  (I tried using the search function, but using words/combinations of "Make" "Domino(s)" "Myself", not only pulls up too many results, but was fruitless with these parameters).

Sorry if this semi-thread-stealing.  [embarassed]

 

[JeromeM]

I'm reading a few comments about how some folks make their own Dominos.  Can anybody point me in the direction of a past thread on "How To" do this.  (I tried using the search function, but using words/combinations of "Make" "Domino(s)" "Myself", not only pulls up too many results, but was fruitless with these parameters).

Sorry if this semi-thread-stealing.  [embarassed]

I think it is simple as apart from the exact fit on both pieces mortice there is no need to round the edges. So my approach would be to use dominos for those and square edged stock for all the others.

Producing correctly dimension stock could be done with a hand plane, table saw, plunge saw, or thicknesser.

 

[Oldwood]

Hi Kevin,
The way I make mine is to first plane some stock to the width of the dominos you need. I use a thickness planer that is well setup and a set of digital calipers to confirm the dimension I am looking for. I find that even a very well setup planer will have some deviation in dimension from one side to the other so on the final pass through the planer I am carefull to run all pieces through the planer at the same location on the knife.

Once I have my lumber planed I rip strips off that are over the thickness of the dominos I want by about 3mm. I have a large bandsaw for ripping lumber so this saves a lot of waste in the saw kerf. Then I plane down to the needed thickness using digital calipers and trial in the mortise to confirm final dimension.

In order to relieve the edges of the stock I used a pair of stacked 45 degree bevel cutters in the shaper with a power feeder and a fence that allowed for all but the smallest section in the middle of the stock to be beveled. Once all the stock is beveled I stack 8 or 10 pieces hold them in alignment and tack the end with a pin tacker to keep them aligned. Then I set up a stop and cut them to length yielding 8 or 10 with each cut.

The setup is time consuming so it is worth it to run enough to last you for a while. If you have a router or shaper cutter of the correct radius you could use that on the edges but I find the bevel cutter works quite well.

HTH
Gerry