Festool Domino Machine Instruction Manual - page 69

height of your skirts, four cross members, 

and stiffeners to reinforce the cross 

members.  Each joint is a sliding dovetail 

for strength and positional accuracy 

pinned with screws.  Make the overall 

width of the frame narrower than the in-

side dimension between the skirts by the 

width required by your ball bearing slides 

on each side.  The normal clearance is 

12mm to 13mm (a nominal 1/2”) each for 

most of these slides, but check yours to 

make sure.

The overall length of the frame is 10mm 

shorter than the distance between the in-

side of your end skirts when the top 

plates are pushed together in the center.  

This is to accommodate the seasonal 

movement of the top plates.

The only critical locating you need to do 

is the placement of the two vertical sliding 

dovetail slots which will hold the leaf pivot 

mechanism (red arrows) and the leaf 

guide pad mechanism (green arrows).

When the leaf is folded out and lined up 

with the edges of the table top plates, the 

hinge line in the leaf will be ex-

actly in the middle of your table.  

When the leaf is folded and 

stored beneath the top plates the 

hinge side of the leaf must clear 

the inside edge of the frame.  So, 

the distance from the inside of 

the frame to the center of the 

pivot mechanism dovetail slot has 

to be about 15mm to 20mm 

longer

 than the distance from the pivot 

mechanism dovetail centerline to the cen-

terline of the table.

The ball bearing slides will hold the cen-

terline of your frame in line with the cen-

terline of your table so make your meas-

urements off of the table centerline.

The well into which the leaf halves will 

drop has to be wider than the leaf by 

enough to clear the Domino tenons and 

the dowels which protrude out from the 

male edges of the table top plate and the 

leaf plate assembly. That dimension also 

needs to allow the leaf to rotate around 

and past the male dovetails that hold the 

leaf pivot points.  

I find making that well wider than the 

width of the leaf by about 40mm is about 

right.  That accommodates the 12mm to