Domino bench 2

[Spectric]

Rather than hijack the "another domino" thread I thought it might be better to continue the theme of the Domino bench elsewhere as @ola c 's videos regarding his design of a domino bench were very interesting and thought provoking.





When looking at the over engineered Woodpecker design it does raise some questions, if they have height adjustment so as a mortice can be placed on the centre line then surely you don't need to flip the fence or have I missed something here. Then re thinking some previous ideas having watched Ola's fence flipping design I realised that maybe you don't need to always flip the fence, why not flip the wood providing it is not a moulding with no flat face? You can do two corners diagonally opposite with the fence in either position, then why not do the other two corners that are diagonally opposite by flipping the wood. Again have I just overlooked something here, this idea came from my experience of using the Dowelmax where your reference faces have tick marks and in some cases you have them 180° out.

 

[Doug B]

To be honest Roy I look at things like this & just wonder why, it appears to me to be a solution looking for a problem.
Thankfully he gave his reasoning as to why he built it at the beginning & that’s where I stopped watching the video. When I bought my Domino 14 years ago it came with a small piece attachment

Ive used this many times & the beauty of it as it’s fixed to the fence it allows me to adjust the position of the domino height wise rather than referencing off the base.
As for small mitres I’ve never had the problems he encounters & have made a lot of small picture frames, I simply cut the slot on the tight setting usually for a No4 domino & if I need a little waggle room simply plane a few swipes off the edge of the domino.
I do occasionally cut slots referencing off the base but this on the planer bed as it’s the flatest large surface I have in the workshop, also I can’t remember actually using the location pins in all the time I’ve had a Domino it’s just so quick & easy to mark a pencil line.
I don’t want to come across as an old curmudgeon disparaging these sorts of ideas but it does seem to be YouTube content for contents sake, I’d be happy to be proved wrong if someone can explain why these things are essential.
It amazes me particularly on Instagram how long folks spend making these jigs which I really don’t see a need for.

 

[ola c]

The whole idea with flipping the fence is that it's extremely difficult to absolutely center the machine on the thickness of the workpiece, even if woodpeckers version has a nice height setting feature. Center in thickness would require very accurate height setting and probably a few test cuts and iterations. So, the entire flip fence idea is to speed up things and have zero test cuts and iterations.

To add to that, in some situations you don't want joint centered in thickness. Example a mitered frame with rebate for a glass you might want to have the joint towards the non rebate side.

 

[Spectric]

I am looking at a bigger version to handle much larger pieces with a 700 and since last giving up with it and returning to dowels I am starting to think the issue is the bulkyness of the 700 and probably why so many use a 500 with no issues. So using the 700 on a bench referenced off the bottom plate removes any issues I might be introducing using it handheld. When using it on sheet goods along with the Fc tools alignment jig it works great but it is the heavier jobs it is not doing for me and what I originally wanted it for.

but it does seem to be YouTube content for contents sake, I’d be happy to be proved wrong if someone can explain why these things are essential.

I know where you are coming from and in a lot of cases would agree but I think there are those who prefer certain tools fixed and take the work to the tool which is totally opposite to what Festool promotes in taking the tool to the work, if nothing else it certainly gets you thinking and just those orange and blue dots would make some of my jobs a lot easier than the current ticks I use. It might be that all my dowel jigs are clamped to the workpiece and not just handheld which takes me back to the 700 being bulky.

 

[Spectric]

Center in thickness would require very accurate height setting and probably a few test cuts and iterations. So, the entire flip fence idea is to speed up things and have zero test cuts and iterations.

Thats the bit that seems like making life harder rather than easier, getting the mortice dead centre is unnecessary and just making life harder so just accept it is slightly off centre and repeat on all joints. But would flipping two of the joints achieve the same as flipping the fence in some cases.

 

[ola c]

To be honest Roy I look at things like this & just wonder why, it appears to me to be a solution looking for a problem.
Thankfully he gave his reasoning as to why he built it at the beginning & that’s where I stopped watching the video. When I bought my Domino 14 years ago it came with a small piece attachment

View attachment 152152

Ive used this many times & the beauty of it as it’s fixed to the fence it allows me to adjust the position of the domino height wise rather than referencing off the base.
As for small mitres I’ve never had the problems he encounters & have made a lot of small picture frames, I simply cut the slot on the tight setting usually for a No4 domino & if I need a little waggle room simply plane a few swipes off the edge of the domino.
I do occasionally cut slots referencing off the base but this on the planer bed as it’s the flatest large surface I have in the workshop, also I can’t remember actually using the location pins in all the time I’ve had a Domino it’s just so quick & easy to mark a pencil line.
I don’t want to come across as an old curmudgeon disparaging these sorts of ideas but it does seem to be YouTube content for contents sake, I’d be happy to be proved wrong if someone can explain why these things are essential.
It amazes me particularly on Instagram how long folks spend making these jigs which I really don’t see a need for.

I am a part time pro woodworker and don't have time or interest to invent unneccesary jigs. I invent them when I see a need to improve accuracy or speed or both. Don't put me in the folder "youtube content for contens sake". I upload to youtube when I have something new to present, not seen on other channels. There could be years between my videos. Of the 6-7 jigs I've presented, 3 have been published in fine woodworking, not this one though but it has been copied by two major companies. I know exactly what you refer to and I am not a fan at all myself of these youtubers presenting old or crappy things, or jigs for the sake of a jig, just to keep the upload flow.

The domino jig quite many people find useful, others are of the same opinion as you, that the same can be acchieved with the thin stock accessory. I find the jig very useful, especially on narrow angled stock, like mitered frames. I use same technique as you sometime, plane a bit off the dominos, but for miters there is a big advantage to have the joint spot on, better than acchieved with pencil marks. When clamping a miter frame together, having no slipping at all is a great advantage.

We all use our domino machines our own way. I almost never use the machine "hanging on the fence" and find the base a superior reference surface, but each to his own.

 

[Spectric]

I would say that my biggest issue with my 700 is exactly that, trying to hang it of a workpiece on it's fence when it is just so much more stable sitting on its base. It only takes a very small amount of movement on plunging to 70mm to have a mortice that is not completely perpendicular to the face, maybe another reason why less issues with the 500 that only plunges to 28mm. Your idea @ola c is hopefully for me a solution to my problem, I just scale up the concept for bigger timber so as can handle my larger workpieces and with relative positioning it might solve my problems. Your idea of setting the fence against the reference pins on the machine is really very clever, it has solved one of my issues on a previous jig where I was trying to make everything symetrical to a centre line and using flag stops on a fence. So keep up the good ideas and maybe someone round here might help you with an idea one day.

 

[Doug71]

@Spectric how do you hold your 700 when plunging, do you use the back handle? I find it's harder to control if holding the back handle and more likely to lift as you are plunging. I don't hold the handle but push from the very back of the tool so I'm pushing directly in line with the cut, I have my fingers under the tool and my palm on the back doing the pushing, I think I sometimes even use my leg to push behind my hand. For me the handle on the 700 is only there for carrying it and moving it around.

I'm not giving up, at some point I will have you loving your 700 like everybody else does

 

[Spectric]

For me the handle on the 700 is only there for carrying it and moving it around.

Thats an interesting line of thought, will have to give that one a go !

 

[BucksDad]

@Spectric clearly wants to love it because he’s never tried to sell it on here either!

 

[Spectric]

clearly wants to love it because he’s never tried to sell it on here either!

I just hate being beaten by something that has potential, it does make a nice mortice and I believe with something like the domino bench it can be persuaded to place them accurately where I want them without using the sloppy setting. Worst case I sit on for longer and maybe the prices will continue to rise and I get all my money back, in the meantime it can keep the lawnmower company !!

 

[johnnyb]

spectrum I'm the same. I just feel I can't trust the 700 to put the mortice in the right place. the 500 I don't have any issues with. my lamello top 10 is spot on with alignment. I've just put it down to tolerances and the stresses of plunging 14mm 70mm deep it's not an insignificant chunk of material tbh.

 

[Spectric]

@johnnyb Thats what is such a shame, it does half the job extremely well but then unless you accept the sloppy setting it is let down by alignment. If there were no issues and it was precise then there would be no market for aftermarket items from Woodpeckers or Fc tools and such. I hope to come up with a larger version of Ola C's domino bench that will resolve my issues and allow easy morticing of larger sized wood to make easy panel and frames, will post if successful.

 

[Spectric]

Having started thinking about Ola c's ideas and wondering about a potential solution for my 700 by making a larger version of his bench idea, the real clever bit was his idea of using the machines indexing pins to reference a fence from which up until then had me coming up with ideas that failed to deliver I now have a thought that seems to obvious but needs some others thoughts to confirm.

If you were making a frame from four sides and rather than cut a single mortice in each end so as eight in total you cut a mortice in every piece with the fence in it's initial position and then flipped so you end up with two mortices in every piece, both would be offset from the outer face inwards by 15mm in the case of using a 700 and so can anyone see any problems before I try in practice ?

 

[Spectric]

They say a picture paints a thousand words so here is a picture. Basic frame with four parts, A,B,C & D and an Ola type domino bench where each fence is referenced symetrically from the machine so as the cutter centre is 50mm from the fence. This shows that fence flipping is a must if you want to ensure all the outer edges align, you cannot do what I thought in my post above and a simple drawing shows why my thinking was off piste shall we say.

P1 to P4 are the four positions shown in the lower diagrams. I was thinking of say part A P4 could be done in position 2 but would use the wrong face as the datum, there is a lot to be said about the Dowelmax tick system .

 

[HOJ]

@Spectric , curious, how would you deal with thicker stock if only referencing of the bench surface, does that not constrain the "vertical position".
The 700 I would suggest is more of a "Joiners" tool for banging in 14x70mm deep mortices.

 

[Spectric]

how would you deal with thicker stock if only referencing of the bench surface

Thats the next phase, I will provide final drawing once done but basically I will make the base using layers of material in two parts. One side will be where the domino will be fixed, a solid one piece sandwich shown at the top of the bottom four diagrams and the other will be where with all layers in place it is level with the other part and you get a 15mm offset but by removing layers you can increase the offset as the workpiece becomes lower than the cutter. Also with thicker material you could do all the mortices and then remove a layer and do them again to end up with two mortices in each piece OR but this is still in the early thinking stage you could do all position 1's in position 3, all position 3's in position 1 , all position 2's in position 4, all position 4's in position 2 which might be faster. I think the key will be to clearly mark up the workpieces.

 

[ola c]

This shows that fence flipping is a must if you want to ensure all the outer edges align, you cannot do what I thought in my post above and a simple drawing shows why my thinking was off piste shall we say.

Many have had the same thoughts and asked me if the fence flipping is really necessary. Once drawed up it's obvious.

 

[Spectric]

Yes having used the Dowelmax tick system for a long time where you put ticks on the faces to be flush and an x on the face to be drilled then the jig is put on the workpiece then the domino bench where the work piece is taken to the cutter is about face but as you say once drawn then it can be visualised and I saw the errors in my thought process. I have also thought about spacers for the fences, with the spacer in place you get the first mortice , remove the spacer and you now have a second mortice in line which is something useful with larger section timber and the 700.