What’s the actual difference between the festool domino and a ryobi biscuit joiner?
About $1100.
A biscuit joiner is a circular saw. It cuts a short, crescent-shaped slot into which a thin, flat, oval shaped beech wood spline called a biscuit is inserted. Allegedly the glue soaks into the biscuit and expands it in the slot, but…jury’s out. This can help align panel glue-ups and other joinery, but don’t add much strength compared to a simple glued joint. Biscuit joinery was invented in the mid-50’s, initially as a system for joining manufactured sheet stock like chip board or plywood. The patents have expired by now allowing anyone from Bauer to DeWalt to manufacture biscuit joiners. They’re fine for attaching face frames or for aligning tabletop panels where the glue is going to be plenty strong enough, but they aren’t appropriate for proper load bearing joints like attaching table legs to aprons or holding chairs together.
The Festool Domino joiner is a router. Using a straight up-cut spiral bit, it quickly routs out a small flat-bottomed mortise with rounded ends, which could mate with a traditional tenon but it’s truly intended to make two matching mortises which will be joined by a loose tenon. Festool sells ready-made loose tenons called dominos sized to fit the
tenonsmortises made by the tool. A so-called domino joint is as strong or stronger than a dowel joint, in some cases approaching the strength of a traditional mortise and tenon, making it suitable for structural and load-bearing joinery. Floating tenon joints are ancient technology (examples dating back to the neolithic have been found) but Festool’s contraption allows you to make them at the speed of a biscuit joiner. Festool introduced the domino joiner in 2005, and is still under patent for a few more years yet, so they’re only available from Festool at frankly exorbitant prices. But I’m sure the likes of Ryobi and Stanley Black & Decker have them already drawn up and ready for production the moment that patent expires.ready for production the moment that patent expires
which is probably in 2025: https://www.wallybois.com/when-will-the-festool-domino-patent-expire/
We are almost there
I wonder why your linked article felt the need to quote Elon Musk’s idiot opinions on patents at such length.
I’m not sure there’s another tool people spend more time on Youtube excusing themselves for using. Just imagine:
“Now on this project I am going to be using my palm sander. Now you don’t have to have a palm sander, you can get pretty good results sanding by hand. But since I do have a palm sander, I’m going to use it.”
If I was running a commercial shop churning out furniture for retail sale, I might buy something like a Domino. The time it saves over a router table or dowel jig will pay for itself if it means you can build 10 chests-of-drawers in a month instead of 9.
In my home shop, which is a 10x12 shed in which I make stuff for me and my family, thinking about maybe opening a little Etsy store…I ain’t got room for the box it comes in. I legitimately struggled to find a place to put some sandpaper I bought the other day.
For me it was more the video “We build this wonderful (some totally expensive wood) box for (absolutely small money)” - and the key point was that he had a large enough cutoff of said expensive wood lying around from a previous project, and all he needed to purchase was some felt and hinges.
I have a pocket knife, and there’s plenty of logs in the brush. I could probably do it for less money at the cost of more time.
“Today we’re gonna make an entire dream house for only $0.17. So to start with, let’s go outside and see what we can find just laying around.”
grabs $47,000metal detector, hops in a $60k 4x4 with clear product placement labels in every shot, two minutes of time-lapse of someone wandering around aimlessly while apparently looking for things
“Alright so we found a couple old glass bottles that can be washed out and made into a rustic display piece, and if you follow me over here you’ll never guess what I found. That’s right, its 147 acres of forested land with a 6 bedroom, 2.5 floor cabin and small pond, all with blank ownership forms! And with just a couple million graciously donated by my parents, we have all we need!”
" this just goes to show all you need to do to accomplish your dreams is get your hands dirty and do a little hard work."
filler for ad revenue
" Anyway thanks for watching, this episode was sponsored by that game company you hate and can never escape ads for! "
2.5 floors? Is that how they describe lofts or something?
I live in a hilly area; here a 1.5 floor dwelling is built into a hillside and basically has two floors on one end and one floor on the other end.
Don’t forget the plainer, 6ft vices, 14in miter, industrial table saw, ceiling vacuum, 10k sqft working space, chisels, and time.
Oh and the pallet that isn’t covered in grime and weathered.
I don’t get the hate for the Domino. It is an extremely useful tool to save time, but it is a purely luxury thing and there is nothing that you can’t do without it. After all, in the end a Domino is just a fancy dowel and you can build anything that is shown in those youtube videos with a cheap dowel-jig. I built complete tables with this jig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osC9T3WVnlM which cost me 20€ in a set with dowels, drillbits and woodglue. Yes, it took me 2 hours to do the dowelling which would have been 15 minutes with the Domino, but I am only building a table once every 10 years and not weekly like those Youtubers do.
My main gripe is that you can’t roll one out without excusing yourself from using it. So you hear “Yes today I am using a Domino, but you don’t have to. I get lots of comments saying “Well that’s great if you have $90,000 worth of tools” You could do this with biscuits or dowels, or make the mortises with a normal router, you don’t need this thing, but since I do have one…” And I’m kinda tired of skipping through it.
But it speaks more to OP’s overall gripe, where woodtubers will start a video with the thesis statement “I made this in an afternoon out of just one 2x10!” Actual materials list: 1 2x10, two board feet of white oak and half a board foot of walnut “I had lying around,” four hanger bolts, four lag bolts, two pairs of self-closing drawer slides, four locking casters, and nine nails. Add on to this several large pieces of plywood, pine and toggle clamps for making specialized jigs. Several steps use a jointer, planer, drill press and other large, expensive tools hobbyists likely don’t have. The joinery process takes no time at all because of the use of a $1500 joiner.
“And that’s how I turned a single 2x10 into a luxury camping trailer that sleeps six, all before dinner time!”
They sell it as a cheap and fast project, except during the course of the video the budget balloons into the tens of thousands when you include the tools. Sure you could get it done with a simpler set of more basic, multifunctional tools…it’ll just take forty times longer.
