Festool Domino Machine Instruction Manual - page 33

holds it in that position while the cut is 

made.

To check to make sure both mortises in 

both sides of all four legs line up cor-

rectly, I put a dry (no glue yet) Domino 

tenon into each joint and push the legs 

together as shown in the top photo on the 

previous page.  If the mortises are all 

perfectly aligned, the legs will go together 

easily.  If they are not, the legs won’t go 

together at all.  

As before, all 8 mortises wound up in ex-

actly the right places by indexing one off 

of the leg end and the other off of a visual 

reference mark.  That would only work if 

all the Domino measurements, machining 

and markings are all spot on - and they 

are.

Now we need to cut the vertical mortises 

which will index the side skirts and the 

skirt pieces beyond the drawer openings 

to the legs.  To cut these I needed to set 

the Domino fence to be exactly 22.5mm 

to center those on the 45mm thickness of 

the legs.  They must be spot on because 

those skirts will sit in a dado we will cut in 

the platform frames and they have to also 

index into the legs via these Domino M&T 

joints.

I keep a set of metric gauge blocks 

around just for such purposes.  Remem-

ber the step block built into the base of 

the Domino machine?  That slides back 

and forth to establish a step that will posi-

tion the Domino fence up half that 

amount from the centerline of the cutter.  

One of those stop block settings is for 

40mm thick material and it will position 

the cutter right in the center, or 20mm up.  

We need 22.5mm up to center on our 

45mm legs, so I placed a 5mm gauge 

block between the step and the fence to 

register the fence for a 45mm stock 

thickness to put the cutter centerline up 

22.5mm.

I could have just eyeballed 22.5mm on 

the height scale and pointer, but the 

gauge block method is much more pre-

cise.

To establish the reference to center the 

mortise between the other two mortises I 

used the auxiliary spring pin wings that 

attach to the dovetail in the base of the 

Domino fence.  You can see that in the 

photo to the left.  By hooking that spring 

pin over the end of the leg and placing