Hey Wood Shop,
Do we have any tooling at DMS to make finger joints?
Example:
It looks like I’m going to need to do a lot of end grain joining of wood for this butch board top I’m making for Hatcher’s.
If we don’t have any, I’ll revert to biscuit joints.
Thanks for the help,
Nick
Usually done with a router bit. To my knowledge, we don’t currently have one, but feel free to suggest it. In the meantime, you can use biscuits, or mortise/tenons using the Festool domino…
Nick,
I may have a new old stock finger joint router bit in my stash at home. I’ll have a look tonight.
If not - I would use the Dominos at the space.
If you can find it Tom that would be much appreciated as it looks like I could be doing easily 50 plus joint on the table top I’m building.
For a tabletop of any width at all, I would suggest the the Festool Domino is your best approach. Easier to manage than finger joints, very strong, and allows you to treat the top like a big glueup.
Are you trying to use finger joints to edge glue your pieces, or to join pieces length wise to obtain needed lengths of wood. If the former, then my suggestion is to simply joint and glue the pieces. With properly prepared joints you don’t need any mechanical additions.
For the latter, it is hard to beat a finger joint approach, but old fashioned scarf joints can work well, though they are more time consuming.
It is the latter option,
I had to cut down many of the lengths of wood in order to square them without wasting too much wood. Link to other thread showing the topic Hatcher’s Work Bench. I’m really having to stretch the wood I have in order to make this butcher top work, so I will have a bunch of jointing.
Thanks for the run down @wandrson, it explained my problem better than I was explaining it.
Nick,
If you can’t get your hands on a finger joint bit, my suggestion would be to use scarf joints. If all of your boards are planed to the same thickness, they aren’t too difficult to manufacture in quantity.
You set the table saw up with a dado cutter and create dadoes about 1" long and half the thickness of the boards. You then glue them end to end treating the half laps as scarf joints. Not as attractive as some of the original style scarf joints, but much faster to produce and should be at least as strong as a finger joint.
Nick,
I found my finger joint bit - 1/2" shank new in the box.
Awesome,
IF you could leave it for me in the Hatcher’s Workshop committee area, just leave a note for Nick on it. I’ll guard it with my life. 
Thanks for the help tom!
I would think that “Hatcher’s Workshop” would be able to find a much more appropriate tool to guard something! 
I’ll be down tonight around 7ish
Great 
,
That means I get tonight off from working on the table, guess I’ll relax and watch out BOD Town Hall Debates!
Thanks,
Nick
Nick,
It was great meeting you last night and putting a name with a face!
I look forward to seeing how the finger jointing goes, and the progress of the reloading shop.
It was great meeting you and putting a face to the name as well.
I’ll be trying out this awesome tool tonight and seeing if making flush joints isn’t too difficult for me. :fingers_crossed:
