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.
What can happen on too thin wood is: You put in the biscuits. All the extra glue moisture gets out of the biscuit joints,there are now hollow spots where the biscuits are located. Best wait for a week or more to sand the wood flat around the biscuit areas,so it doesn’t suck in later.
Six simple steps to make perfectly aligned joints using a biscuit joiner. A biscuit joiner cuts half-oval slots in mating workpieces; then you glue in a football-shaped “Biscuit” and clamp the joint tightly. For maximum strength, use the largest biscuit that fits your joint.
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.
biscuit joiner 1/2 wood Related Question:
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 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 many biscuits should I use to join wood?
Two biscuits per foot is a great rule of thumb, but the goal is just to make the alignment task easier. So, if you have a couple of edges that are 24″ in length and are dead straight & perhaps you would only need two biscuits to do the job.