I found this video incredibly helpful for learning how to properly glue up boards using a Domino tenon joiner. The presenter went through the process step-by-step in great detail, explaining the reasoning behind each technique.
A few key takeaways for me were the importance of choosing the right domino size by following the “third-third-third” rule, not sanding the domino tenons themselves, and “buttering” the tenons with glue before insertion rather than putting glue in the mortises. His tips for dry-fitting the dominoes by knocking down the alignment rib with a block plane, and checking for any chips in the mortises that could cause gaps were also great practical advice.
I appreciated how he demonstrated the ideal clamping approach using the Domino joiner’s cross hair guides to capture one tenon tightly first before leaving the others loose for alignment. His “cradle” clamping method looked very effective for evenly distributing pressure.
The presenter clearly has extensive experience with this process after 17 years of domino joinery. Even simple tips like using a hotel key card as an inexpensive glue spreader showed his creative practical mindset. Overall, I feel much better prepared to successfully glue up boards with dominoes after watching this incredibly thorough and well-explained tutorial. The patient step-by-step approach made it easy to follow along.
Here is the Transcript:
So a lot of questions have been coming into the Sedge Tool channel on gluing up when you’re using a domino tenon. So stay tuned, we’re going to cover a lot of tips and tricks on gluing up that I’ve learned over the years. So I selected to put these two boards together. I selected a 6X40 Domino, six being the thickness. So I changed the bit on my Domino Joiner to a 6mm, that’s where your glue line is. Now the reason I chose 6mm is the rule of thumb in woodworking. Come in here, Chris. Okay, is this is a shoulder, this is a shoulder, and you want to divide it equally into thirds. We call it the third, third, and the third rule, where your mortise will be here, and that will be, let’s think this out, 18mm. 6+6+6 is 18, so you always divide by 3. That’s how I have been, and that’s how I choose what size Domino.
So this is the first thing I want to talk about when you’re doing a glue-up. I just did a mortise off the center line. I had a 6mm bit in here, and I went in the tight position here. So this came about because somebody was saying, “I sand my dominoes down to dry fit.” Well, that person was sanding them down here on the face, and what happens is, this is where your long grain to long grain adhesion happens. And I’m just going to do this so you can see it. There’s a herringbone design on here, and those little points there are what is known as glue wells. And you can see on each Domino, the world’s greatest power tool company is on there, but it also tells you what size it is. It’s a 6 by, what, 40? So I have it set here at 20.
Now, in dry fitting, I’ve seen people, like I said, saying that thing, that’s not good. What you need to do is there’s a little rib here, and it doesn’t affect the glue well. You can sand it off, but I like to take a quick little block plane and knock it off like that, like that, and you’ll find your dry fitting is a lot easier. So I just cut this apart with the dovetail saw, and I’m going to take it out so you can see something. As I take it out, there’s my mortise, those are the pencil marks on there. But I want to flip this around, and hopefully, this comes out. If I push that all the way down because of the bit, it’s wobbling back and forth, so there’s a very slight arc. That is good because if you put too much glue in that mortise, it’ll just wick up the sides with these hydraulic wells. So you can’t bottom out the Domino completely because that little slight arc will push the glue up through and out to the surface. Hopefully, that explains the actual mortise that the Domino creates.
I always mark the face where I’m going to lay the plate of the Domino, and that’s the direction I’m going to go. I’m going to use the cross dots to just mortise these, and once again, I always do tight, and then I do the other two loose. So when I’m working with wicked hardwoods, this is one of the things I always look for because I’ve had it turn into a little bit of a fiasco. Come in here, Chris, see this right here? Sometimes, because it’s hard, and the bit maybe dull or whatever, you get these little pieces that come up on the side of the mortise. So what I do is, I just do, and I don’t want to hurt this top edge or bottom edge, but I come in, and I just sand that really quick. You don’t have to do it all the time, but it just helps because that little bit or that little chip may hold the gap open; your seam will show.