Festool Domino Machine - Page 52

always does, to examine the various
pieces on display, oohing and awing as
she went. A friend with them noticed the
“happy birthday” placard on the desk first
and nearly fell over. The guest contained
herself until the client finally saw the card
as well. Then the tears and hugs began.
Can’t beat that for a reward.
Now let’s look at the “Domino con-
tent” of this project.
Transportability meant that
the top needed to come
apart from the pedestals.
The requirement for maxi-
mum space between the
pedestals and between the
ground and the bottom of
the top meant the top had to
be very strong to span the
distance, yet there would be
no conventional pencil
drawer bridge to help sup-
port it.
The solution was to build the
top as a two piece torsion
box with the top and bottom
layers of the torsion box
joined with long sliding
dovetail stringers as can be
seen in this detail of one
front corner of the top as-
sembly.
There is a lot going on here. The top is
one solid glued up slab of Oregon Big
Leaf Maple so it will expand and contract
a lot front to back, summer to winter. It
also would want to warp in sympathy with
the annular growth rings in each of the
individual boards that make up the large
glued up top.
Sliding dovetail stringers going front to
back and spaced about 300mm apart,
such as I use under solid wooden kitchen
counter tops, will solve the warp issue as
they will hold the top plate perfectly flat
for generations to come.
I could also dovetail the bottom of the
same stringer to be the means of holding
the bottom plate of the torsion box to the
top plate. But, you can’t put those sliding
dovetails too
close to the
edge of the
top or the
stresses
from normal
seasonal
movement
might break
off the
edges of
the dovetail
grooves.
Moving the
outboard
most
stringer in-
board far
enough for
strength
would solve
that issue.
The design
of the piece required the top be banded
with Blood Wood on all four sides to
make the top look massive and allow it to
float visually off of the blood wood risers
on the top of each pedestal. That imparts
a distinctly Oriental flavor to the piece
that makes it both modern and clean at
the same time.