Post by craigmarshall on Apr 5, 2008 16:43:26 GMT
Hi,
I'm working with a joiner/furniture maker at the moment and he's very fond of the mafell duo-doweller, and we use it for most of our frame and panel stuff. It's a great machine, and does a similar job to the festool domino, which you might be more familiar with. I would like one but they're about £400, and the domino jointers are even more. Then you have to factor in the cost of all the dominos or the time pushing dowels through sizing plates etc. So - I came up with an idea about making a domino jig of my own to use with the router, and it works a treat. One of the nice things is your dominos/biscuits can be made from the same (durable) material you're working with. It took about an hour to make the jig using an offcut of 6mm polycarb (v. cheap from the glass place), and a stick of oak.
Here we're ready to rout a stile:
As you can see it has a line scribed and inked on the underside and the workpiece just needs a pair of lines marked (made with the marking wheels) from the end. I've made it so the two slots are spaced about right for 2.5" stock. But you could use a single slot and do anything from 1" to 3" stock if you wish. The two routing slots are 17mm for the guide bush and are themselves made with the router, several finely adjusted passes with the 15mm cutter.
As I use other sizes, I'll scribe more alignment marks parallel with the fence.
And the end of a rail:
And these are pretty self-explanatory - no we didn't buy them from Hafele! They are 8mm x 30mm x 50mm long - they are simply chamfered using a thicknesser jig we made before, rather than rounded:
It took a hair over 30 minutes to joint and glue up four large 2.5" section pieces for an interior glazed door. This is timed from the point where the wood is all planed up and cut to length. It took about 17 minutes to do the equivalent with the doweller. I think the festool domino would be somewhere in between because it can't handle quite as fast a plunge as the doweller.
Well - I like it anyway and hopefully it will last for many more jobs.
Cheers,
Craig
I'm working with a joiner/furniture maker at the moment and he's very fond of the mafell duo-doweller, and we use it for most of our frame and panel stuff. It's a great machine, and does a similar job to the festool domino, which you might be more familiar with. I would like one but they're about £400, and the domino jointers are even more. Then you have to factor in the cost of all the dominos or the time pushing dowels through sizing plates etc. So - I came up with an idea about making a domino jig of my own to use with the router, and it works a treat. One of the nice things is your dominos/biscuits can be made from the same (durable) material you're working with. It took about an hour to make the jig using an offcut of 6mm polycarb (v. cheap from the glass place), and a stick of oak.
Here we're ready to rout a stile:
As you can see it has a line scribed and inked on the underside and the workpiece just needs a pair of lines marked (made with the marking wheels) from the end. I've made it so the two slots are spaced about right for 2.5" stock. But you could use a single slot and do anything from 1" to 3" stock if you wish. The two routing slots are 17mm for the guide bush and are themselves made with the router, several finely adjusted passes with the 15mm cutter.
As I use other sizes, I'll scribe more alignment marks parallel with the fence.
And the end of a rail:
And these are pretty self-explanatory - no we didn't buy them from Hafele! They are 8mm x 30mm x 50mm long - they are simply chamfered using a thicknesser jig we made before, rather than rounded:
It took a hair over 30 minutes to joint and glue up four large 2.5" section pieces for an interior glazed door. This is timed from the point where the wood is all planed up and cut to length. It took about 17 minutes to do the equivalent with the doweller. I think the festool domino would be somewhere in between because it can't handle quite as fast a plunge as the doweller.
Well - I like it anyway and hopefully it will last for many more jobs.
Cheers,
Craig
