3PedalMINI said:
Were redoing our kitchen and haven chosen to go with a cherry countertop. Ive done some practice glu ups and im not to happy with the dewalt biscuit joiner i purchased a few years ago (surprised?)
its one thing with a bunch of cheap pine but for the final product i want this to be as perfect as possible. Will the dominos help prevent "cupping" and help with vertical alignment? There have been a bunch of other house projects that would be nice to have the domino for to but this is the main project im trying to justify the domino for.
Thanks!
I do a lot of large panel glue ups, and have done many countertops. Before I got my domino I would use two rows of biscuits (one on top of the other) to maintain vertical alignment.
Nowadays I use the 5mm dominos strictly for alignment, just because I find it more hassle to lay down cauls, and even if you have a perfectly jointed face/edge the board always likes to slip up and down with wet glue.
I don't necessarily think the domino is better than the biscuit joiner in how much it helps with the alignment, but the cross stop pins are a huge time saver. I wouldn't get a domino just for that though. As an example I recently joined three large ash boards and had the dominos slots all cut in about 20 minutes (a domino every foot or so). Superb DC as well so no mess.
The most important thing you can do to make your life easier and final product better, is to have proper, methodic four-squaring stock preparation.
That means, face joint the boards (if they're relatively flat on either side, you can skip that and just skip plane, especially if it's a heavy board), plane the other side, joint one edge, table saw (or track saw) to final width. If you used the track saw you might not have to go back to the jointer, with my table saw I usually go back with one light pass.
Having that edge perfectly square to the face is what really matters in getting a pain free, and flat glue up.
After you have that, you can use a biscuit joiner or domino to align, that way your seams are even, and you have less rough sanding to do after your panel is done.
I find the whole alternating growth rings thing a secondary consideration- if a board is going to board or cup, it's going to, and when it does you will have issues, regardless of whether it looks like a washboard, or a potato chip. It's OK to do it that way, but making sure your lumber is well conditioned, stable, and working it only when it is ready is key. Proper finishing and allowing the panel to be evenly exposed to moisture changes is also important.
I say this because if you limit your board arrangement in order to prioritize the growth rings, you better have near perfect lumber, with perfect grain orientation between boards. In my experience this is never the case, and I would not cheat the final appearance of my work in order to get the growth rings to alternate. Remember that your final product will be attached to the cabinet with screws, so to a large extent bowing or cupping can be minimized by forcing it flat. Always give it room to move across the grain though.
