Biscuits are 4mm thick and available in three main sizes – #0 at 47 x 15mm, #10 which are 53 x 19mm, and #20 at 56 x 23mm. The biscuits are compressed slightly and usually made from beech. The fence and depth adjustment system set the height of the cut and depth. Plunging the tool leaves an arced slot that accepts manufactured wood joiners called biscuits – hence the name biscuit joiner, although plate joiner is also used. The motor in this tool is housed in a barrel driving a 100mm diameter TCT tipped, 4mm thick sawblade – actually on my calipers it was 4.16mm thick. With the extra fence fitted slots can be cut in various thicknesses of wood. But recently, I’ve come back to the biscuit.ġ. I sold my biscuit joiner and converted to dominos and have never left them. The actual technology had been around for years in heavy joinery machines but packaging it in a handheld power tool was an innovation. When Festool released their domino tool in 2007 it was a game changer. Later on, Lamello was the name he chose for the 1968 release of the first portable version of a quick jointing tool. In 1956 a Swiss carpenter, Hermann Steiner converted an angle grinder to make simple joints for panels made from a then-new material known as chipboard. ► Looking for a meaningful, productive hobby? Learn how to get started woodworking and set up shop for less than $1000.There are many reasons why you can rely on the functionality of the biscuit joiner, explains Raf Nathan. You can build your first project this weekend with absolutely no experience and no biscuit joiners. And if you’re looking for an effective, proven, step-by-step method for learning woodworking that cuts through all the BS, I want you to head over to and check out my online courses. ![]() There are some other uses, but I don’t find any of them to be a compelling reason to own a biscuit joiner.īottom line? Even beginning woodworkers can learn simple and more versatile techniques than biscuit joinery. But you really don’t need them at all for this use. But again, I would prefer to just use pocket screws, dados, or rabbets.įor cabinet-face frames, biscuits are a viable option and might be helpful for attaching them to the edges of a plywood cabinet. If your boards are too narrow, you can reinforce the joint by adding the biscuit on the back side of the face. They will definitely provide more strength than glue alone, but not a lot. Or maybe corrugated joint fasteners on the back.īiscuits can be used to join the ends of boards to edge or face grain. If you’re going to edge-join boards, you will need to use cauls to keep them flat anyway.Īnd if you’re making miters that aren’t going to be subjected to a lot of stress-say, a picture frame that just hangs silently on the wall-you can get away without any reinforcement to the miters at all. There’s so much play in a biscuit joint that it hardly draws the edge seams together flush. but biscuits are useful to help keep boards aligned when edge joining.” I used to think that myself, but I’m not sure if this does anything either. Just gluing up boards edge to edge is super strong on its own. ![]() Again, watching Norm Abram gluing up panels this way pushed me into buying a biscuit joiner.Įventually, woodworkers came to realize that biscuits add basically zero strength to an edge joint. One of the most common uses for biscuits is edge-joining panels-say, for making a table top. So the problem here is not whether it works or not it’s that its effective uses are very limited. These things are compressed wood, and the glue causes them to expand a little, creating a joint. You make a slot in each piece of wood you want to join, then add some glue and drop in one of these little biscuits. The tool has a little saw blade that plunges into wood, creating a slot. Well, to be fair, biscuit joinery does have some limited uses, but probably not enough to justify its purchase, and I don’t want you wasting money on tools that are just going to gather cobwebs.īut first, if you’re new to woodworking, or if you’re a maker, you may not even know what a biscuit joiner is.
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