Woodworking

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Lol. Carpenters and framers use Dewalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Metabo, and Bosch. If you showed up with a truck full of Festool, we would assume you have more money than sense. I'd expect to see a bunch of Festool in a fine woodworker's shop over a job site.

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.

Nobody hates the domino. They hate that it's used in YouTube projects trying to display doing something on the cheap.

If the projects used a dowel jig instead, nobody would complain. But the domino is a very expensive tool and blows the goal of a 35 dollar project.

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 ~~tenons~~ mortises 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.