#Biscuit joiner how to#

We’ve seen some very affordable joiners that offer excellent performance. PriceĮven though all joiners perform the same basic function, the prices can fluctuate wildly. But others are heavy and cumbersome, which can make it much harder to work with them vertically. Some joiners make this easy with stout handles and light bodies that aren’t difficult to maneuver in such a position. This means lifting the joiner and using it vertically, with the blade facing down into the face of your wood. But to cut your slots into the face of the board, you’ll have to be able to change the angle of your joiner. If you’re going to join two boards at 90°, then you’ll be cutting biscuit slots into the edge of one board and the face of the other. Luckily, most joiners offer an adjustment knob that lets you raise or lower the cutting height of the machine so you can work with woods of varying thickness and still create your cuts in the very center of the edge. This is great for one particular size of wood, but if you want to use wood that’s not ¾ inches thick, then you need some adjustability. Most joiners are set to a standard depth of ¾ inches. Similarly, some fences offer more adjustability, spanning from 0°-135° degrees, instead of 0°-90° degrees like most standard joiners. We’ve seen fences that offer many stops, including angles like 22.5° or 67.5°. Especially if you want to repeat that angle in the future. But fences with no stops make it very difficult to dial in a precise angle. Good fences have stops set at the most common angles, like 0°, 45°, and 90°. However, many fences make it prohibitively difficult to set them to certain angles. Most joiners have an adjustable fence that can be set to multiple angles, so you aren’t limited to joining boards that are straight or 90°. The fence allows you to ensure that you’re set at the right height and angle. When using a biscuit joiner, the fence is one of the most important parts. While three depth stops is the standard, some of the tools we tested offered six or even seven different depth stops, opening up the possibilities for use of different biscuits. For this, you’ll need a joiner with more than just three depth stops. When you need to use special-sized biscuits, you’ll need special-sized holes to match. Because of this, most of the joiners on the market offer three depth stops that are set to these sizes.īut there are far more than just three sizes of biscuits, even though those three are the most common. However, for woodworking, the three most common sizes are 0, 10, and 20. The biscuits will absorb the glue and expand until they firmly fill the slots and provide a strong hold.īiscuits come in a lot of different sizes so that you can join together different sized boards. Once your holes are cut, you’ll cover the biscuits with glue and insert them into their slots, attaching the second board to the first by the biscuit. The slits will be just a little larger than your biscuits to allow room for expansion. Using the biscuit joiner, you’ll create slits in your boards where they’re going to be joined. These are extremely dried out so that they’ll be super absorptive. You can think of them as compressed sawdust. How do Biscuits Work?īiscuits are small football-shaped discs of compressed, dried wood chips. But first, let’s talk about biscuits and how they work. In it, we’re going to briefly discuss the most important parts of a biscuit joiner and what they do. If that sounds like you, then this short buyer’s guide is what you need.

#Biscuit joiner how to#

But if you’ve never used one of these tools before, then you might now know how to pick one for your projects. You know that you need a biscuit joiner to cleanly attach two pieces of wood without any visible markings. Doesn’t have enough power for hardwoodsīuyer’s Guide – Choosing the Best Biscuit Joiner.Included dust bag doesn’t contain any of the mess.

Included blade is useless and burned the wood every cut.