Festool Domino Machine Instruction Manual - page 64

The 400mm wide leaf provides plenty of 

shoulder room for two diners seated at 

the sides of the table and between the 

two leg frames so long as the legs move 

out with the top.

That is one of the design issues for this 

small table.  Most butterfly leaf tables re-

quire a fixed pedestal or a trestle to sup-

port the folding, self-storing leaf and it’s 

deployment mechanism.  This table 

needs to be 

built strong 

enough to 

support the 

span be-

tween the 

legs when 

the table is 

deployed 

and also 

sturdy and 

rigid enough 

to support 

the leaf de-

ployment 

mechanism.

Both Domino 

loose tenon 

joinery and  sliding dovetail construction 

of the table structure play major roles in 

providing the necessary strength and ri-

gidity.

Gluing up the top plates is just a matter of 

grain matching to achieve the desired 

look.  In this case there are four boards in 

each half of the top.  Starting at the cen-

ter and working out these are laid out to 

be book-matched pairs.  That is, the two 

center most boards on each half of the 

top are a book-matched pair.  The next 

boards out are also book-matched pairs, 

and so on.  

I selected pieces that had a lot of grain 

movement to mask the overall small di-

mensions of the top.  Once each piece 

was joined for the glue edges and planed 

to the exact same thickness, Domino 

mortise slots were cut in the mating 

edges as described earlier.

The spring loaded alignment pins on the 

fence of the Domino machine were used 

to register the first slot in from the side  

while the side 

stop with it’s 

pin regis-

tered into 

this slot 

automatically 

registered 

the others.  

I always rec-

ommend do-

ing your glue 

ups with the 

good side 

face clamped 

down on a 

Festool MFT 

work table.  

A piece of 

white butcher paper will protect the MFT 

top from glue squeeze.

When you glue them up clamped to a 

known flat reference surface they come 

out flat and remain that way.  The glue 

lines sand off quickly with the Festool Ro-

tex sander followed by working up 

through the grits until you have a nice, 

flat, perfectly smooth surface.

The next step is to glue up the leaf 

pieces.  In this case the leaf hinges in the 

middle so you have a chance to do inter-

esting things if you want to.