Because biscuit joints are easy to mark out and quick to cut, using one almost seems like cheating. The safest way to cut biscuit slots is with a biscuit joiner. The oversized slot lets the biscuit move slightly, enabling you to tweak parts into perfect alignment.
The cool thing about biscuit joinery is that the biscuit is made from compressed wood. Biscuit joinery may not be for the DIYer who’s just building one cabinet, but if you have a lot of cabinets in your future, a biscuit joiner is a great tool to own. The Family Handyman editor, Ken Collier, shows you how to glue and clamp biscuit joints for a strong and nearly invisible joint.
Properly-cut biscuit joints are strong and accurate, particularly when cutting slots with a woodworking tool called a biscuit joiner. When glued into slots precisely cut by the biscuit cutter, and the moisture from the glue causes the biscuit to swell and tighten the joint. As a general rule, try to use the largest size biscuit possible, as this will provide the greatest amount of strength to the joint.
Years ago, back in the 1990s and early 2000s, a biscuit joiner became a very popular woodworking tool. Well, as much as I admire Norm Abram, a biscuit joiner may be one of the most useless power tools you can own. If you’re new to woodworking, or if you’re a maker, you may not even know what a biscuit joiner is.
how to do biscuit joints Related Question:
Do biscuit joints work?
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.
Are biscuit joints easy?
Biscuit Basics His kitchen cabinets are all held together with biscuit joints. It’s easy to fall in love with biscuit joints—they’re so fast and easy. At least they are when you get the hang of them. If you’re new to biscuit joinery, you can learn here how to do the four basic woodworking joints.
How far apart should biscuit joints be?
Biscuit Spacing Once you’ve determined the positions for the edge biscuits, you can calculate even spacing for the biscuits between the edges. Anywhere from 6 to 12 inches apart, measured on-center is usually sufficient.
What are the disadvantages of a biscuit joint?
Biscuit joints do not stand up well against other joinery methods. We won’t spend any time comparing with mortise and tenon joints because all other joinery methods pale in comparison when measuring strength. But, as an example, the use of dowels as opposed to biscuits is a step up in strength.
Do biscuit joints add strength?
Some folks (including me) may use biscuits for alignment or “reinforcement”, but the truth is they do very little to strengthen the joint. In this long-grain situation, its really the glue that’s doing all the work. As you have heard me and others say many times, the glue joint is stronger than the wood itself.
Are biscuit joints necessary?
Biscuits can be used to join the ends of boards to edge or face grain. They will definitely provide more strength than glue alone, but not a lot. If your boards are too narrow, you can reinforce the joint by adding the biscuit on the back side of the face.
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.
What is the strongest type of wood joint?
Mortise and Tenon Woodworking Joints One of the strongest woodworking joints is the mortise and tenon joint. This joint is simple and strong. Woodworkers have used it for many years. Normally you use it to join two pieces of wood at 90-degrees.
What size are FF biscuits?
The Porter-Cable face frame biscuits join material as narrow as 1-1/2 inches. Standard size 0 biscuits are too long for use in 1-1/2-inch stock, but these biscuits are 13-by-30-millimeters.
How many biscuits make a joint?
As Michael indicates above, the benefit of biscuits is that they help you align the edge glue joint with ease. Two biscuits per foot is a great rule of thumb, but the goal is just to make the alignment task easier.