It’s almost as if the biscuit joiner was invented specifically for use in joining plywood together. Pros The biscuit joiner is considerably easier to work with than cutting mortise and tenon joints, doweling or using pocket screws. While biscuit joining is popular, you may want to consider using other, more traditional, means of joining plywood or boards together, especially as your skills as a woodworker increase.
Biscuits joints serve best as a quick and easy way to keep glue-up parts in alignment, and that they add appreciable pull-apart to strength joints that would be otherwise too weak to stand on their own – like butt joints and miter joints. For this method, edge glue the plywood together, create a shallow bevel along the joint on both sides of the plywood and then reinforce the joint with a layer or two of fiberglass on each side of the joint. Because biscuits are relatively short, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this joint isn’t as strong as traditional mortise-and-tenon or half-lap joints.
I think for strength I’d like to try using biscuits where I can but don’t know how they’d do in plywood. 01-07-2008, 9:00 AM #2 Biscuits in plywood work just fine. 01-07-2008, 8:21 PM #13 Biscuits & sheet goods My understanding is that biscuits were originally intended for sheet good, i.e. mdf, plywood and such.
As you know, biscuits are compressed during manufacture in order to insure they’ll expand when moistened by wood glue, guaranteeing a very tight fit in the slots cut by your biscuit joiner. First, be sure your biscuits are always more than 1/4″ below the surface. In joints like those in your panels, you use biscuits for accurate surface registration rather than for strength, since clean edge butt joints are plenty strong enough to need no reinforcement-so the biscuits don’t need to be glued.
biscuit joiner on plywood Related Question:
Can a biscuit joiner be used on plywood?
However, with a biscuit joiner, clean, unobtrusive joints can be made in plywood, with no visible hardware and clean edges coming together. Whether joined together at 0 degrees, 45 degrees or 90 degrees, all joints are clean and tight, as well as being strong.
How thick should wood be for biscuit joiner?
Typically, you’ll center the slot in the wood. The joiner’s base, when sitting on a flat surface, is preset to center the cut in 3/4″-thick stock.
Can plywood be joined?
The most common methods of joining plywood are the butt joint with backer block, the scarf joint and a hybrid between the two. Each method offers its own distinct advantages and disadvantages in certain applications so it’s important to be aware of each joining method.
Are biscuit joiners worth it?
Biscuits joints serve best as a quick and easy way to keep glue-up parts in alignment, and that they add appreciable pull-apart to strength joints that would be otherwise too weak to stand on their own – like butt joints and miter joints.