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.
If the drawer box is made of solid wood, the joint is end grain to edge grain, which is a crappy joint at best. Wood is not a homogenous material, attempts to classify all joints without regard to grain direction are in error. Most drawer styles I’m familiar with have a front that is wider than the box proper, and this is going to be a pain in the thigh to align up with a biscuit joiner.
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.
If you have less than that material left, then it’s safer to choose a smaller biscuit size. In this article, you learned all you should possibly need about biscuit size for your woodworking project: first of all, what sizes are available in the market and a couple of rules to identify the right biscuits for you. If you are still not sure about the appropriate biscuit size to get, I’d just get a variety pack, which includes biscuits of all sizes: #0, #10, #20. It’s a good idea to get one of those to start.
biscuit joiner 1/2 plywood Related Question:
Can you use a biscuit joiner 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.
How do I know what size biscuits to use?
What Size Biscuit to Use. As a general rule, try to use the largest size biscuit possible, as this will provide the greatest amount of strength to the joint. In most cases, use #20 biscuits, but when working on narrower material, switch to smaller biscuits where appropriate.