The Festool Domino is probably the best tool I own. It’s insanely expensive but when you’ve got to join to pieces of wood together with a good looking strong joint there’s few better ways. In this article I correct an issue I’ve been having by performing a Domino sighting adjustment.

Introduction to Domino Sighting Adjustment

What’s a Domino sighting adjustment I hear you cry. It’s the adjustment of that piece of clear plastic that has a line on that is lined up with the mark on the target piece of timber. From the factory it should be positioned bang in the centre of the tool but mine either wasn’t or it’s slipped over time.

Testing

To see if you need to perform a Domino sighting adjustment grab two flat square edged pieces of timber and domino them together; as if you making a cabinet face frame or something like that.

When you put the pieces together you should find that the alignment line you originally drew lines up perfectly. If you have an end result where the line doesn’t exactly match up you need to perform a Domino sighting adjustment. Note that the image below greatly exaggerates the problem, in reality the misalignment will be 1mm or less.

Performing the Adjustment

For a long while I was under the impression that there was no adjustment available in this sighting piece but on closer inspection there is a small amount. As you can see here my sighting plate is hard over to the right hand side.

Using a screw driver with a Torx head remove the two screws and clean the adjustment plate. The screws have a fine thread so take care when re-inserting them.

Put the plate back in and carefully tighten it down with the sighting plate in the correct location. For my tool, and I imagine most tools, bang in the centre of the adjustment range seemed to be the best location.

Final Testing

Now get a couple of scraps of timber and cut another domino joint.

My aim is to ensure the edge marked with a cross is perfectly aligned once the joint is cut as that is how it was arranged when the alignment mark was made.

Cut the domino joint, bang in a domino and then test out the end result.

You should find that the two pieces now align perfectly.