First I needed to tidy up Mission Control from this ..
to this
For the cupboard, the plan is four separate sides with shelf supports - glued and Domino’d. These four sides would then be KD’d. When fixed together, you’ve got this carcass.
Then to the front of the carcass would be fixed the KD face-frame - off of which would hang the two doors.
I had a spare sheet of 8x4 18mm ply which I could use for the shelves and so that set the width and depth of the cupboard. The height was determined by hanging up some lining paper and sketching various ideas. We want it to end up looking like a standalone cupboard rather than something ‘built-in’. Final result …2.1m tall….give or take.
This is Plan ‘A’ and all the while you have to be planning ahead and thinking ‘Have I got access to the allen keys for fixing the KD joints?’ Next question was whether to glue up the four sides first and then make the slots for the KDs or make the slots first in the stiles before gluing up.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Domino machine, you have the ability to select different widths for the slot that the machine cuts. The normal setting is one that gives you a very tight fit for the Domino. Unless you are extremely careful with your marking out and cutting the slots, if you only use the normal setting then you can end up making a rod for your back as you try and coax the Domino’s into a slot that is, maybe, slightly out by a fraction of a mm. The longer the two lengths of timber and more Domino's there are, the more carefully you need to mark out and make the slots.
So the usual trick is to have one reference slot using the normal setting to align your two pieces of timber, then use the same setting on one piece of timber down the length for the rest of the Domino slots but on the other piece, cut at a wider setting thus giving you a bit of wiggle room when you fit the two pieces together at glue-up.
I decided that I’d glue up the four ‘ladder’ frames first and then align them carefully together and then knife mark them both across where the KD fittings would go.
There is SOME wiggle room with the KD fixings. A standard 14mm Domino is 28.2mm wide. The black snap-on covers on the Anchor Bolt are 27.2mm. The anchor bolt and cross-connector require two slots to be made at 90 degrees and to get them perfectly inline is a big ask. So they planned for that and made the cross-connector 25.6mm wide so a bit of wiggle room there, certainly.
You can also see that there is a sort of countersink in the end of the anchor bolt into which the allen key in the cross-anchor will go as it’s tightened up and so pulling the joint tight. Festool have really thought this through.
Nevertheless I marked up with a knife as carefully as I could and also ensured the Domino machine was spot-on the line, using additional supports to minimise any rocking of the machine as it was plunged.
So…first slot (bit embarrassed as I see that the basic frame alignment is out a bit)
Take one split-anchor
And press it into the slot. I use a clamp to ensure it goes in square with a final light hammer tap to make sure it’s flush and square with the surface of the wood.
As you can see, the split anchor is a tight fit.
Then we take the anchor bolt and screw it into the split-anchor forcing those serrated jaws apart. You can either use a small spanner or a small hex socket. And it was at this point that I noticed a couple of things that I wasn’t expecting.
In the instructions that come with the anchors,
Festool show at (1) that the spilt-anchor should be flush with the surface (red arrow) and what they don’t say or show is whether or not it should stay flush with the top after the anchor bolt has been screwed in. Because if you look closely here, you will see that as the bolt is tightened the split-anchor is drawn below the surface by about 1mm. I wondered if that would throw the final fitting out of whack.
Then looking at (2) on the diagram, it also suggests that the anchor bolt is not screwed in fully. That also gave me pause for thought because there is a small sleeve on the bolt that is a perfect fit for an indent on the split-anchor. On looking more closely at the Festool drawing, it does indeed go into the indent. Just wish they’d make these things clearer.
You have to remember to rotate the bolt until the countersink is facing the cross-anchor. Once the black clip-ons have been fitted, you can easily turn the bolt by hand to adjust.
In Peter Millards’ YouTube review of the smaller KD fittings (for the Domino D500) he expressed concern about the vulnerability of those anchor bolts. In the case of the larger fittings that I’m using (a) they are much more substantial and (b) can easily be undone by hand leaving the split-anchor securely behind.
Here’s one joint prior to final tightening.
Having cut some of the slots I discovered that the CUF (cock-up fairy) had visited and I’d cleverly put a slot bang through the joint on one of the shelf supports.
One of the advantages of this system is that if you do put a slot in the wrong place then you simply glue in a spare Domino into the errant slot, leave to dry, cut flush and redo the slot in the right place. DAMHIKT. However, here I felt a judicious extra support was best.
I can’t tell you the sheer relief when I offered up the two frames to find that they simply dropped into place. And this is where we came in….
....to be continued
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.