From The Workshop: Handheld Mortiser (aka poor man's Festool Domino) Part II
So, there was supposed to be a write up and video and everything back in 2018 about the DIY floating tenon mortiser (aka domino) I was making. I shot the video, but never got around to editing it.
The concept worked well but I learned some things and made a Rev. 2 version late in 2018. The Rev 2 was fundamentally the same, but with a reduced cutting capacity (width) and functional dust collection. There were some problems, so I had planned on making a Rev 3, but I only ever used the mortiser once on an actual project, so it was never a priority. I finally got around to starting on the Rev. 3, so I wanted to do a better job documenting Rev. 2 so there was context for a new post about Rev. 3..
This is not the video I shot in 2018/2019, but it should give an idea about how much the cutter needs to move to cut a mortise that fits a 6mm domino.
Although I already reduced the cutter side-to-side travel from Rev. 1 to Rev. 2, I still needed a travel stop of about 6 mm on either side.
I wanted to make the next iteration as narrow as possible so it was less bulky, but I'll get to that is a different post.
To make the pivot, I drilled and tapped a pair of 1/4-20 holes in the body of the makita laminate trimmer. I didn't have a lathe at the time, so I ended up using the drill press with a well-lubed bearing block clamped to the table as a vertical lathe, and a cheap wood chisel as tooling. It was about as sketchy as it sounds to do, and took forever to make three pivot blanks. Three because while cutting the threads into the two blanks I prepared with a die, I managed to shear the threaded portion off one of them, obviously ruining the part. So back to the ghetto lathe and wood chisel for part number 3.
After threading, I cut a slot in the head of each pivot part with a hack saw for a flat head driver.
As a whole, the piston system works really well and is easy to fabricate.
The handle and fence design I had for the first 2 revisions was unstable and never gave me confidence in positioning the tool, especially on legs and the ends of rails. Mostly because I cut too large of a witness hole in the fence and too large a hole in face for the cutter to extend through the front fence.
Both openings made it very difficult to stabilize the mortiser if the workpiece was narrower in any dimension than the openings. I thought about using a piece of acrylic on the moveable fence, but never got around to that either.
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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I had to source a 6 mm collet for the laminate trimmer since the 1/4" collet was too large for a 6 mm cutter. I used a 1/4" cutter for a while, but I ended up having to make 1/4" dominos on the router table out of scrap European beech from the bed frame. The collet didn't fit the makita properly, so I ended up having to reduce the collet base diameter on the drill press.
The part is no longer available on amazon, but it was sold under the part name:
Flameer 6/6.35/8mm, Collet Chuck Head for Electric Router Milling Cutter Woodworking - 6mm, 6mm
I found something that looks similar:
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