Using a Biscuit Joiner
Using a Biscuit Joiner
A Biscuit Joiner does one and only one job. If you want a simple way to strongly attached or join two boards, and do not want to use nails a Biscuit Joiner is a relatively simple tool to have.Using a Biscuit Joiner
Woodworkers know that there are many approaches to joining two pieces of wood together. The key is to choose the appropriate joint for the application at hand. Sometimes a project might be subjected to heavy stress during its useful life (dining chair, step stool, etc.), and under such conditions you might call upon the industrial strength of mortise and tenon joinery, dadoes or other robust mechanical connections. On other occasions you might choose to make the joinery itself a showcase portion of the project, in which case you might choose the timeless beauty and symmetry of dovetails or finger joints.
A biscuit joiner is a type of wood-working tool that allows you to make unique joints including edge-to-edge joints, t-joints, miter joints and corner joints in your woodworking projects. The first key to knowing biscuit joiner basics is to know what is a biscuit. A biscuit joiner is a woodworking power tool which is used for cutting slots in areas of wood where they are to be joined together. To strengthen the joints between the wood, specifically designed sections of wood known as "biscuits" are glued into place in the slots. A biscuit joiner is a common tool used for joining together two flat pieces of wood. They are called so because of the oval shaped pieces of wood which are placed in the pre-cut slots resemble biscuits. This allows the planks of wood to be fitted together in a similar way to a child’s building bricks.
There are many woodworking projects where it may become necessary to use a biscuit joiner. Biscuit joiners are small, flat pieces of wood that make it possible to attach a smooth “face” to things like kitchen cabinets, without the unsightly and annoying appearance of nails or screws. Below are explanations of biscuits and biscuit joiners, as well as how to use them.
Using a biscuit joiner, also referred to as a plate joiner, is the best and most secure method of joining two pieces of wood. Until the biscuit joiner showed up on the scene, you either applied glue to both edges and hoped the pieces didn’t move while the glue was drying, or drilled holes and inserted dowels - but if the holes weren’t perfectly aligned the result was still an uneven, unfinished-looking project.
A plate joiner is a tool that has little use beyond the one task that it is designed to complete, but it performs that task so incredibly well, that it is one of the few single-task woodworking tools that I'd recommend for every workshop. Also known as a biscuit cutter, this specialized mini-saw cuts thin slots in the edges of stock to hold a biscuit, which is used much like a dowel to hold two pieces of stock together.
A plate joiner, commonly called biscuit joiner, biscuit cutter, or biscuit jointer is a power tool used to make very strong joints in woodworking projects. Using a small football shaped wafer of compressed wood called, not surprisingly, a biscuit to bridge the joint between two pieces of wood, these tools are fairly inexpensive and extremely easy to use. The wood joints produced with a biscuit joiner are very strong without the use of nails, screws or other mechanical means of attachment. Primarily used to join the edges of boards together, as in a table top, they can also be used for joining the corners of drawers, picture frames or many other types of joints commonly used in woodworking.
Biscuit joiner tricks and tips
Home work shoppers everywhere are getting biscuit joiners these days, and for good reason. They make it easy, quick and wonderfully satisfying to join pieces of wood in all kinds of ways, both old and new. Biscuits are oval-shaped, factory-cut pieces of compressed hardwood that come in sizes ranging from 1/2-inch to 2 1/4-inch long. Plastic biscuits, interlocking aluminum ones, and hinged steel biscuits are also available for special applications. Wooden biscuits -- the kind almost everyone uses exclusively -- form the heart of a surprisingly strong woodworking joint when set into matching, arc-shaped slots.
