Got the Domino - Thanks

[Brad Olson]

First, thanks to the members who answered many of my questions regarding a Domino Purchase.

I ended up purchasing the Festool Domino with the Trim and Cross Stops and the Domino starter systainer.


I purchased this from Bob Marino, and am extremely pleased with the service I got from him. I investigated a total of 5 dealers before buying from Bob. The big deciding factor was that he had what I needed in stock and would ship the same day as the order and most importantly, he answered all of my email questions within a few minutes of sending them. Several dealers took 1-2 days to respond to my inquiries and when you are dropping close to $1000 on a tool I expect better service.

My big question was regarding the Festool vacuums.

I decided after about 2 weeks of contemplation, that I really wasn't prepared to drop $300-500 for a vacuum that would only add marginal improvements over my ShopVac with a cleanstream filter and bag. Yes the Festool vac is far superior, but for my needs it isn't $500 more superior (to me the CT22 plus hose garage seemed to be the best value out of their vacs).

So what did I do instead? I purchased a 1", 16' Festool hose to plug into my existing shopvac and then I purchased the $20 Sears Craftsman Autoswitch. For $140, I figured this would be a good compromise since the thing I only really wanted from a Festool vac was the tool trigger. It did have some other nice features, but to my eye for the moment it did not add up to $500 more in features.

So my initial impressions?

Systainers are great. I am extremely disorganized and I love having tool cases. Even better when they have a place for all the do-dads. Snapping them all together is great for my OCD side.

The machine is EXTREMELY well built and EXTREMELY well designed. Compared to my other PC, Dewalt and Panasonic tools this thing takes the cake. Most of this is in the small little design elements such as quick release levers on all the adjusters, positive ball bearing stops on the fence. The indexing pins are a thing of genius. No measuring or marking and you can pop out perfectly aligned mortises. The trim and cross stops are a bit hokey, but the domino itself has places that accept these additional add ons. I don't know if these will ever be useful, but I figured I get them now rather than need them later.

Initial use trials

I had some small bits of cherry scrap and I figured I would just scratch out the joints that would be required to build an end table (later I will give it an acid test with a real end table). I hacked out all the domino joints required for a table in about 10 minutes. The dominoes fit very well (even considering the RH right now is near 100%) and no glue was required to hold my scratch assembly together. The best part is that everything aligned perfectly and I had a perfect plane on the top where the table top would go. No measuring or marking was ever done.

Initial strength. I glued up one of the joints with two 5X30 dominoes, let it cure for 30 min in clamps, 30 minutes without and then beat it with a hammer. Result? MUCH stronger than a biscuit (BTDT). Seems to be on par with a true floating tenon and definitely weaker than a drawbored M&T. I was extremely skeptical about this since I STILL see plans in magazines for coffee tables with double biscuit joints to the legs. I have tried this twice (following a plan to the T) and in both cases at least one of the joints failed in use. While this is in no way scientific, after assembly of the test joint, I feel no problem using a domino instead of a traditional M&T. The only thing I would hesitate on is in places where I would need the strength of a drawbored joint to prevent racking.

Dust extraction. Near perfect and MUCH better than my former Dewalt biscuit jointer. There was no shaving left on the bench period even using my shop vac instead of the festool vacs.

Overall impressions. Exactly 20 minutes after taking this out to my shop, I had all the joints made that would be required for a small end table (albeit in scrap ugly cherry). I also have done this previously by hand or by using a hollow chisel mortiser and tenon jig. Since the domino requires only seconds of set up time it is vastly quicker than the old way which requires lots of fiddling and trimming. In fact I own $400 worth of hand tools specifically to trim and individually fit M&T joints so from this perspective I am very happy. And the best part is no residual dust from the tenon jig sitting on the floor or a huge pile of shavings to clean up.

Now to the big question, is it worth it? So far yes, but I will report back later. I personally do think that festool stuff is overpriced. But with that extra price you are guaranteed to get an extremely nice tool. Festool meets this demand and after making my first joints I am very impressed and a lot of my apprehension has worn off.

Now a final comment. The domino is making a lot of noise. However, early on I built a router jig to make floating tenon joints quickly. With a bit of improvement there is no reason why the domino is better than this approach. If you are on a budget, but some metric router bits corresponding to the domino sizes and build a mortise jig for you router and buy dominoes. The dominoes are so cheap and well machined that they are worth it. I would consider this a fair compromise for those wanting the speed of the domino without the $$ to buy the machine.

Anyway, I am looking forward to hacking out a few projects with this tool. So far it is quite nice to use.

[frank shic]

alright brad, THANKS A LOT for putting yet another tool on my future purchase list

[Scott Coffelt]

Great review. I've had mine for awhile now. I would love to say it gets used all the time, but considering I reall yhave not done anything in my shop except for cutting exterior trim for windows and also trmming out the interior windows. I have used it about 8 times so far and it has been all that I ask. I have some fall furniture projects int he works, so it will get used heavily then.

[Don Bullock]

alright brad, THANKS A LOT for putting yet another tool on my future purchase list

I agree with Frank on this one. SWMBO is not going to like this so I'll have to put off the purchase at least until sometime next year. She has been very supportative this year with all my tool purchases so I don't want to push my luck just yet.

Brad, your review is excellent.

Congratulations!!!!

[John Stevens]

But with that extra price you are guaranteed to get an extremely nice tool.

Brad, glad you like the Domino. I hope it never needs service, but if so you'll see that some of the high purchase price goes to pay for the excellent service that Festool provides. I own about ten Festools, and as expensive as they are, I've gotten all I've paid for.

Regards,

John

[frank shic]

don, i think the key is to try to get the delivery to coincide with a day that SWMBO will be out of town or away in the afternoon when that loveable brown truck shows up. at least, that's what i'm hoping for next week when my bosch 4000 shows up - it's going to be challenging trying to hide that beast in the garage where she won't see it!

[Brad Olson]

I sort of asked for permission, however, I mentioned it was "expensive" but never gave a number on HOW expensive.

As a hobbiest this is one of the most expensive single purchases I have made but again after messing with it again this morning, I don't regret spending the money so far. It has a 30 day no questions return policy which is comforting.

[Ray Knight]

I started playing with my domino jointer today. Generally pleased. Instructions aren't all that good. The storage boxes remind me of airline meal serving modules. Fit together nice, bit awkward to open. BUT when you put a locating bracket on the tool, they won't fit back in the storage case. DAMN. You need to disassemble the damn thing, or arrange some other storage. And if you have it set up for a cut you are going to use a few times each day, you sure don't want to disassemble it. So you have that fancy storage box and you can't use it. Ray Knight

[Dan Clark]

Ray,

First check on the Festool Owners Group dot com forum. Lots of good help and feedback there.

Then, check out the FestoolUSA dot com website. Under the green "Applications & Tips" tab, you'll find "Getting the most from the Festool Domino Machine by Jerry Work" and several other excellent Domino documents.

Festool makes good tools, but their documentation is somewhat less than optimal. The two resources above should help.

Dan.

[Brad Olson]

It came with a manual ?!

Festool owners group is where I am learning most and they too complain about the lack of a manual commensurate with the cost of the tool.

There is however, a great manual link on Bob Marino's website "Getting the Most out of your domino" or something like that. It is under the "Tips" section

[Rick Christopherson]

Brad, try this http://festool.home.att.net/

[Brad Olson]

Brad, try this http://festool.home.att.net/

Rick,

Thanks, that is a MUCH, MUCH better manual!

Brad

[Andy Coverdale]

For applications where you want a drawbored tenon just use the domino for the mortise; then cut the tenon as usual with a saw of some kind.

Andy

[Don Bullock]

don, i think the key is to try to get the delivery to coincide with a day that SWMBO will be out of town or away in the afternoon when that loveable brown truck shows up. at least, that's what i'm hoping for next week when my bosch 4000 shows up - it's going to be challenging trying to hide that beast in the garage where she won't see it!

Frank,
Not a chance. At our house SWMBO pays all the bills. Please understand that I'm not hurting for tools or a tool budget, especially this year - bband saw, bench top mortiser, 8" jointer, bench top drill press, 13" planer and a SawStop. Besides, for some strange reason, that Brown Truck usually delivers right after dinner at our house.

[Jeffrey Schronce]

Brad, try this http://festool.home.att.net/

Thanks! Though I have used my Domino pretty extensively in the last few months, this manual would have been a God send back upon inital set up and use of the machine.