Festool Domino Machine Instruction Manual - page 3

What is a Domino Machine?

Let’s begin by exploring the tool 

itself.  It is made up of a body 

with a unique mechanism that 

both rotates and oscillates a 

drill-like cutter bit.  The body 

slides nearly effortlessly on two 

hardened steel shafts built into 

the fence section of the tool.

Once aligned where you want 

the cut to be made, you push 

the body towards the work piece 

to produce an elongated slot, 

most commonly called a “mor-

tise.”  

The Domino machine fence and 

positioning systems allow you to 

center that slot both horizontally 

and vertically very accurately.  

Built into the machine are adjust-

ments for the width and the depth of the 

slot.  The cutters can be interchanged 

easily and quickly and come in 5mm, 

6mm, 8mm and 10mm diameters produc-

ing slots of those widths.

The idea is to cut a mortise slot 

into which you can insert a pre-

made wooden tenon which Fes-

tool calls a “domino,” hence the 

name of the machine.  

You can make your own if you 

want to, but the pre-made Fes-

tool tenons are extremely 

strong, very precisely dimen-

sioned to fit perfectly into the 

mortise slot cut by the Domino 

machine and they are quite 

economical to buy.  My recom-

mendation is to simply use the 

Festool dominos and not try to 

reinvent that wheel on your own.

The pictures on this page show the Dom-

ino in broad view.  As we come in closer 

with the detailed photos on the next few 

pages we will see the many precise ad-

justments and alignment aids.