A child's bookshelf in cherry

Recently, a friend asked me to make a bookshelf for his daughter, who turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. It's the perfect height for a child, and has space for large picture books, as well as more grown-up chapter books. The design is one I like a lot, and I plan to refine it further in the future.

In fact, you may notice that the finished piece on the left is different from the raw piece on the right.  The one on the right didn't seem quite right, so I built a second piece (with better proportions), which was definitely a step in the right direction!

Festool Domino Joiner: Long-Term Performance Review

I have owned and used the Festool Domino "biscuit" joiner for about a year now.  I've used it in dozens of projects, employing nearly all of the Domino's features, fences, and tenon sizes.  Now, a year on, it's time for a review of the product that many regard as the best biscuit joiner in the business.  My overall verdict: the Domino is indeed an excellent tool for biscuit joinery, provided you know its shortcomings and foibles.  If you aren't familiar with the Domino's quirks, however, you could be setting yourself up for some expensive disappointments.

This review looks at the individual features of the Domino, one by one.  I think this is the easiest way to organize the review, and also makes it an easy reference while using your Domino. for each feature, I list the positives first, and the negatives second. 

Click "Read More" for the rest of this post...

A good use for the 5mm Festool Domino cutter - expansion slots

The Festool Domino biscuit joiner has a rep as the best, most well thought-out biscuit joiner on the market.  It even uses its own proprietary "domino" tenons rather than traditional biscuits.  But the Domino isn't without its glitches.  To wit: the 5mm cutter cuts mortises that are often too small for the 5mm "dominoes".  In a year of using the Domino, and over the course of three packages of 5mm dominoes, I am still convinced that the 5mm tenon is the worst-fitting of all the sizes available, and also convinced that more than 30% of the 5mm dominoes in any given bag are too large for the mortise and have to be sanded back or baked in a microwave in order to fit. 

I have stopped trying to use the 5mm tenon in my projects.  But I have found a use for the 5mm cutter: making slots for mounting cabinet tops to their cases, and table tops to their aprons.  The slots are a great size for z-clips (see photo).