Festool Domino DF 500 RQ-Set Loose Tenon Joiner — All Four Cutters
Festool · Model: DF 500 RQ-Set (578544)TENONS ARE NOT INCLUDED — order them before your rental starts.
Tenons are the small beech blocks that glue into the mortises. They are consumed by your project, so they are yours to buy. A 300-piece box is around $23-31 and one box covers most builds:
Match the tenon to the cutter: 5 mm for 3/4 inch stock, 6 mm for general furniture, 8 mm for tables and chairs, 10 mm for heavy frames. Cutters for all four of those sizes ship with the tool, so you choose — just bring the matching tenons.
No vacuum or hose is included. The tool has a 27 mm dust port. Any shop vac or wet/dry vacuum will connect with a 27 mm adapter — a household vacuum will not cope with the chips. Extraction is not required, the tool cuts fine without it, but chips pack into the mortise and can affect how the tenon seats. Worth hooking up if you have a shop vac to hand.
Never used one? DOMINO Joining Machine 101 — Basics is a 4-minute walkthrough. For more depth: Getting Started with the DF 500 and the complete guide.
The loose-tenon joinery system that changed cabinetmaking. Cuts a precise floating mortise in seconds — stronger than biscuits, faster than traditional mortise and tenon, and self-aligning during glue-up.
This is the current RQ generation: upgraded fence carried over from the DF 700, quick-release levers, solid double-column design, and imperial depth gauges alongside metric.
In the Systainer: DF 500 RQ joiner, all four cutters (5, 6, 8, 10 mm), cross stop, trim stop, support bracket, WAF 8 spanner and Plug-it power cable.
The trim stop centres a mortise on narrow stock and the cross stop gives repeatable spacing across a run. Between them you can get square joints on the first attempt without having used one before.
Variable mortise width lets you cut one tight reference mortise and slightly wider mating mortises, so long assemblies still pull together square. 420 W, 25,500 rpm, 28 mm maximum routing depth, with depth stops at 12, 15, 20, 25 and 28 mm and a 4 m cable.
Face frames, cabinet carcasses, doors, chairs, table bases, mitred boxes. Over $1,500 to buy with the full cutter set — worth renting for a single build.
Please treat the cutters gently. The 5 mm is the fragile one and a broken cutter is chargeable.