The wait is finally over.  It is time for the Festool Domino XL DF 700 to come to Canada; and it was worth the wait!

What is the Festool Domino system and how does it work?

The aim of the Festool Domino XL is to make a joinery system to work around your project design and not to design your work around your joinery system.  Essentially, the Festool Domino makes the strong and beautiful, although time consuming loose mortise and tenon joint quick and easy.   It has a patented design spiral cutter, which rotates and oscillates (wobbling side to side) to create flawless mortises in one simple plunge.   The dominos are principally the loose tenons joining the two mating mortises together.  They come in various sizes and are embossed with fine lines for improved gluing.  The Domino XL has two settings to change the size of the dominos for precision repeatability of the mortise.

The Domino XL DF 700 is essentially the Domino DF 500’s bigger and stronger brother, specialized for more robust construction projects.  Where the DF 500 cuts a mortise at 5/6/8/10mm, the DF 700 steps it up with the capacity to cut an 8/10/12/14mm mortise for overall bigger projects.  With repeatable joints, the Domino makes a wide variety of projects more efficient and durable.

The Beta Test:

Festool gave the Domino XL to 25 of selected professionals from a disparity of different disciplines to see how well the Domino XL would work for the typical user.  The results are outstanding.  Some of the professionals saved upwards of 500 percent of their work-time!  It is not hard to see the dexterity of a tool like this put into the right hands.

One of the companies given the opportunity to use the domino XL was located right in Victoria, a wood-working company called Victoria Wood Studios.   They use the Domino mortise and tenon joinery system for their gate construction projects due to the strength, stability and ascetics. After using the Domino XL, they told Festool they were “pleased with the time savings and ease of construction using the Dominoes for the joinery on the project.”

Here is a link to the rest of the project on the Festool website.