Took the parts of yet another bonsai table up to a friend's place to
show him a bit of what the DOMINO can do - with a common M&T
application. Had done a prototype of the two joints for a demon
-stration I was supposed to do last week (but my van lost all its
transmission fluid on the way and I left all the parts in the van
in order to make the meeting and do a less than ideal demo).
I had all the presets written on the prototype parts - bit diameter,
fence to center line distance setting, depth of cut and, for the
apron parts with two mortises, which end of the first mortise
was to be used for the second mortise.

Put the outriggers on the DOMINO - set them for 180 mm for
the stretchers and cut 6 mortises in each leg, then four
more in each end of the four aprons without having to change
anything but the fence to mortise centerline. Screwed up on
a couple of the apron mortises - referenced off the wrong side
of the previous mortise - but recut to semi-fix the problem.

Scribed the centerline of the width of a stretcher, put the
Narrow Parts accessory on the DOMINO, lined up with scribed
centerline on the part with the scribed mortise centerline on
the bottom of the DOMINO's "foot", slid the left and right
"fences?" in to the sides of the part and locked them in.
Two more mortises on each of the four stretchers and it
was done.

Had 24 mortises in the legs
16 mortises in the aprons
8 mortises for the stretchers
----
48 mortises total
time 20 minutes - and that's cause I was describing the process
for each of the three parts - legs, aprons, stretchers.

He had the legs, aprons and table top already to go, plus
a spare leg and some apron stock. Using a Tite-Mark, found
the centerline of one face of the legs, measure with a 4"
sliding square, set the fence using the metric scale rather
than the stepped "preset", set the fence to mortise center
line to 24mm, and all that was left was to change the bit to
8mm set the depth of cut to 20mm for the 8x40 mm tenons
and it was test cut time.

Discovered that the tenons would conflict with each other
in the leg. His solution was to shorten the loose tenons
on the disk sander. My solution was to change the depth
of cut to 12mm to avoid the conflicts and cut the mortises
in the apron 28mm deep to get the total 40mm the tenon
required. Since he was using english sycamore, 12mm in
the legs would be more than adequate.

He cut 16 mortises in the legs in under 10 minutes and that
was for a first time user. He particularly like the No Layout
Lines thing.

Changed the depth of cut to 28mm, set the "stepped preset"
to 25mm for the nearly 1" thick apron stock and he cut
the mortises in the apron, 2 per end per part - for a total
of 16 more mortises - again in about 10 minutes.

Dry fitting the parts, we discovered that one of the 32
mortises was off. Best guess is that while the bottom
of the fence was held tight to the top of the part, he'd
probably rocked the handle horizontally when he made
the "off" mortise. Recut it and he was all done.

Thirty two mortises cut, tenons inserted and dry fit
- in under a half an hour.

His comment:
NOW I understand what this thing can do. I'm going
to get one of these things.

My unstated response - You have only an inkling of
what this thing can do.

NEXT!

charlie b

16 mortises in the legs later it was set up time


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