I have used both pocket hole joints and biscuit joints when building my DIY furniture projects and my observation is the joints are equally strong. When thinking about if a Kreg Jig vs a biscuit joiner is easier to use I look back to our cleat example. There are some unique differences between a Kreg Jig and biscuit joiner.
While biscuit joiners make use of biscuits with glue inserted into crescent-shaped slots that have been cut into the edges of two pieces of wood, the pocket screw technique involves drilling holes through wood panels at an angle and joining them with a self-tapping screw. Woodwork and carpentry experts have always tried to escape the untidy ancient joinery methods like simply hitting nails to joints, by replacing them with biscuit and pocket screw joinery. Actually, when glue is used together with the screws in pocket screw joinery, the joints become even more reinforced, thus ideal for fixtures that may be exposed to rougher handling, as compared to biscuit joinery. If you have to choose them in terms of the strength of the joints created, then the pocket screw should be your best option. The speed of working with a biscuit joiner is quite faster as compared to that of working with a pocket screw, thanks to the ease of alignment. In addition to this, most biscuit joiners usually have dust bags to collect the wood chips and dust, thus less messy as compared to pocket screw joiners that have no dust bag. Whether you are a new buyer that wants a joinery tool for your DIY projects or you are a professional carpenter with a woodwork business, the choice between a biscuit joiner and a pocket screw joiner is always a dilemma.
biscuit joiner or pocket screws Related Question:
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.
What can I use instead of a biscuit joiner?
Some tests suggest a dowel joint will provide stronger joinery than biscuits. Tests also indicate that dowel joints are not as strong as tenon joints or dovetail joints. They do make solid and accurate joints, though. A dowel joint will be a better method than nails or screws and are much less susceptible to breakage.