Festool Domino DF500 Joiner – Advanced Mortising Techniques

Here are a couple of useful techniques for expanding the capabilities of your Domino joiner.

Mortising Using Intersecting Lines

You can mill a mortise on a board at any desired location. Here’s how.

1. Draw two perpendicular lines – one horizontal (H) and one vertical (V) – where the intersecting point is the desired location for the mortise.


2. Position the machine on the work so that the edge of the milled flats on the base plate aligns with the horizontal line, while the center line on the base plate aligns with the vertical line.

The edge of the milled flat is in line with the center of the cutter.

3. Plunge the machine steadily to cut the mortise.

This technique allows the mortise to be cut at any location or orientation on your work.

Milling Workpieces Thinner Than 15mm

If a board is thinner than 15mm (for example, 8mm thick) even with the fence bottoming out, you won’t be able to center the cutter to the center of the work on its edge.

At the lowest fence height, the center point of the cutter is 5.5mm from the fence.

To work around the fence height limitations, you can use double-faced tape to attach a 5mm to 10mm thick shim to the underside of the fence.

The shim has the effect of lowering the fence farther toward the cutter.

With the shim in place, adjust the fence height until the cutter aligns with or is close to the center line of the workpiece. When using this technique, be certain there is enough wood remaining in the mortise sidewalls and that there is no chance the cutter will break through the surface.