Laguna Slot Mortiser, worthwhile purchase? *LINK*

Re: Laguna Slot Mortiser, worthwhile purchase?

Michael Bush

>A thousand bucks for mortises is quite a few pennies. Are you setting up a production shop as a business?

If you're not, you can chop a whole lot of mortises with a drill press and chisel before it would be worth a thousand bucks, IMO.

Re: Laguna Slot Mortiser, worthwhile purchase? *LINK*

charlie belden

>Unless you're planning on doing big exterior doors, or Arts & Crafts / Greene & Greene / Stickley that use through mortise and tenon joints and use the ends of the tenons as decorative elements of the piece - may I suggest loose tenon joinery - and the Festool DOMINO.

Runs about the same as the LT but for furniture sized joinery a lot faster, easier and more accurate - with no need for layout lines. An absolute newbie can be shown how it works, and, assuming the parts were cut square, the edges straight and the faces flat and parallel - produce strong, light tight joints at biscuit cutter speed and ease.

I've got and used the horizontal boring/mortising function on my LT distributed Robland X31 combination machine - AND - I've got an used the General International 75-750M chisel and bit mortiser - AND - I made and used a router based slot mortising jig - AND - I had and used the TREND M&T Jig. Was looking at the LEIGH FMT Jig and the Festool DOMINO - and went with the DOMINO for reasons described in the pages the link below will take you to. Hands down, with the exception of doing BIG/LONG tenons and through tenons - the DOMINO is without equal for furniture sized loose tenon M&T joinery and I give my reasons for saying that.

Cutting a mortise of a specific size is easy. Cutting one at a specific point on one part is a little trickier. Cutting TWO, one on each of two parts that are to be joined, at the same distance from a reference end and reference face - THAT's where things get a LOT trickier. The DOMINO makes it so phreakin' easy.

I have no connection to Festool or any of it's retailer or wholesalers (I don't think they even have wholesalers) - other than owning and using one - and paying the full Introductory Price - out of my own pocket.


Festool DOMINO

Re: Absolutely, worth it! *LINK*

Rick L

>Been using similar machines for 30 years, along with chisel, chain and the Maka mortiser.Also used tenoners and room sized double tenoners. The horizontal slot mortiser is the most efficient and simplest way to go. It's only a bit more than the Domino but much more versatile as you can do small mortise and large mortises and you can dowel drill and general horizontal drilling. I do have access to a Domino and still prefer the horizontal slot mortiser. Others will have different opinions but there is no doubt of the versatility of the slot mortiser but unless they used one they will never know.


Best cabinet door joint!

Re: Laguna Slot Mortiser, worthwhile purchase?

Bill Earl

>I have a similar machine from Rojek. It gets a lot of use in my shop. It is faster than the hollow chisel or the router and much more versatile than the Domino.

Loose tenon stock is easy enough to mill yourself. Lee Valley also sells pre-milled tenon-stock in several sizes.

Thanks for the feedback

Craig Daymon

>Since Greene & Greene are my favorite furniture designers, this might be something I can make good use of. I've got a couple months to think it over.

Appreciate the responses.

-Craig

DOMINO mortising ends of long parts

charliel belden

>Loose tenon joinery requires that you cut mortises in the end grain of at least half the parts. With the DOMINO - ALL parts are mortised laying down flat - on any semi-flat surface - a bench, on saw horses - or your driveway since the tool comes to the wood not the other way around. AND you don't usually even need to clamp down the part since you'll be pushing the "fence" of the DOMINO down onto the part and the oscillating bit applies almost no FOREWARD pressure if you use it a biscuit cutting rates of feed.

Think of cutting mortises in the sides of the sides of a two, three or four panel door. You've got five feet of wood hanging out passed the side of the horizontal mortisers table and room for one clamp and a fence or stop. If you want to support what's overhanging it'd better be on ball bearings since a roller stand won't work - and the LAST THING you want is for the part to move while mortising.

If you go to the link I gave earlier, scroll down to the "DOMINO Projects" and go through the four projects

- a table with stepped back aprons

- a simple 2x4 gate 7' tall and 5' wide - with mitered corners - for mortises per miter

- a Refuse Container Surround that involves mortising the ends of 6 foot long 1x6s - actually THREE mortises, one tight and two with some slot for expansion/contraction

- raised panels floor to ceiling linen cabinet - by an absolute newbie to woodworking

you'll see typical real world, common situations where loose tenon joinery mortises are cut.

It would be nice if someone else with actual real world experience with a chisel and bit mortiser, a horizontal mortiser and the DOMINO would go through those projects and give thought out time estimates to do the mortises - including layout and machine set up times and any other accessories and their set up times (roller stands, jigs for mortising mitered corners. etc.)

Then estimate the time to cut the mortises for the linen cabinet - if you have to instruct an absolute newbie to woodworking - to actually cut all the mortises.

Now imagine that the floor to ceiling linen cabinet has to be put together On Site because if it were pre-assembled you couldn't stand it up on site, let alone get it up the stairs, with one landing and a 90 degree turn.

Now imagine that ONE of the mortises has been cut in the wrong place and it needs to be plugged and recut - and your shop is 6 miles away.

With the caveats on special types of projects - A&C through tenons and BIG doors (and even with big doors a single wide tenon will cause you grief which is why doubles are usually used in place of one wide tenon - and with the DOMINO you can do four loose tenons if you need that much strength) - I can recomend the DOMINO over a chisel and bit mortiser and a horizontal mortiser - inlcuding the MultiRouter.

(the MultiRouter will of course do other things the DOMINO can't do - but just for mortising, the DOMINO is faster, easier and as accurate if not more accurate).

I'm getting evangelical here but the DOMINO is that revolutionary a tool.

Re: Thanks for the feedback *LINK*

Thomas S Stockton

>Craig,

I have both a multi-router and a domino. Both work great and are easy to use the domino is more convent while the multi router is more versatile. You probably also would want to find a hollow chisel morticer to dot the square and rectangular holes for Greene and Greene furniture, I use a fairly cheap and crummy one for this but it works fine and saves a lot of time and gives fairly consistent sizes holes.

Which would I choose. If I didn't build chairs I would probably get a domino and make jigs for larger mortises. The only problem I see with the Laguna mortiser is the table doesn't angle, but you can always come up with fixtures to overcome this.

I don't think you can go wrong with either and I'm really surprised that Festool hasn't come out with some sort of jig to mount the domino in to make it a little more stationary after all there big selling point is that they are creating a "system".

Tom


ebony peg tutorial

Re: DOMINO mortising ends of long parts

Bill Earl

>There are odd occasions where it would be easier to bring the tool to the wood instead of the other way around. But there are many more cases where the Domino tenon size is not the ideal size for the job.

I admit that there are times I could make good use of a Domino. But there are many more times when a stationary horizontal motiser is the tool of choice. Last weekend I cut 96 mortises using 13 different setups. The smallest was more than 4 times the size of a Domino tenon.

Good points, all, and my take...

Ellis Walentine

>Charlie makes a good case for the hand-held mortiser approach (the Domino machine). But, of all the loose tenon joints we made in my custom shop over the years, the majority of them involved larger tenons than are available for the Domino system. I'm talking about tables, furniture and architectural woodworking (doors, mantles, entertainment centers, you name it). Domino tenons are less than 2" long, so, in my opinion, they are not well suited for table leg-rail joints or door stile-rail joints. They are excellent for cabinet doors, face frames, picture frames and such, but I don't believe that using multiple small tenons makes up for the holding power and mechanical strength of larger tenons. Somewhere in there, there is a tipping point where bigger tenons are better. Plus, as someone has mentioned, the Domino tenons are quite expensive. We used to make custom loose tenons in long strips from scrap lumber, bullnose them over, rip air channels and cut them off to whatever length we needed for the job at hand.

If you don't generally work on larger projects, the Domino might be the only slot mortiser you'll need. Otherwise, consider a stationary mortiser. The Laguna machine is quite solid, similar to the Rojek but less expensive. If I were getting back into woodworking for a living, I'd definitely consider it. If I only made furniture occasionally, I'd probably drill and chop the mortises.

Ellis

Re: DOMINO mortising ends of long parts

charlie belden

>"But there are many more times when a stationary horizontal motiser is the tool of choice. Last weekend I cut 96 mortises using 13 different setups. The smallest was more than 4 times the size of a Domino tenon. "

Wide tenons are interesting. At some width, expansion acrossed the grain of the tenon, and little if any dimensional change in the mortised piece, can become a problem. Which is why one wide tenon is often replaced with two narrower tenons, with some wood between them. And since the DOMINO makes it just as easy to do four mortises as one - you could use FOUR smaller tenons in place of one BIG tenon. But you have to think in terms of what's needed and not How Long Will It Take To.

"Tilt Jig" for horizontal mortiser *LINK*

charlie belden

>Ray McInnes, of the Yahoo Robland X-31 group came up with a great jig for horizontal mortisers - developed when he was working with chairs. Very flexible and adaptable.


Mortiser DIY Tilt Table

Mitered Corners 5'x7' Gate Frame *LINK*

charlie belden

>Four 10mm (0.4") thick loose tenons, each a tad under 2" long, in the mitered corners of 2x4s - pressure treated since its for a garden gate frame on which netting was stretched to keep rabbits and deer from eating the crop. 32 mortises cut by an absolute novice at woodworking after I showed him how the DOMINO worked on a pair of mitered scraps. ALL cut with the piece laying flat on my miter saw tables - no clamps.

For a wide front door you could probably do six mortises on each part. And large doors are typcially paneled so the shear load is taken up by at least three horizontal members - plus the panels.

The attached photo is of a gate I did - for a garbage can surround. All joints epoxied because this thing sits outside in the elements - such as we have in the SF Bay Area.




Dominoed Mitered Corners of Tall Gate