If I screw up one more time...

[Sweet Willy]

I'm making a stinking man's dresser valet. Found plans on the net that uses only biscuits for joinery. Well the box has 90, 45 and 22.5 degree angles and it's driving me crazy. Cutting the angles is no problem. Figuring out where to cut the slots so things line up as they should is making me nuts! Almost threw my bisuit cutter across the shop today. Made me even madder at myself.

I guess some days it just don't pay to chew your way out of the restraints.

[chopnhack]

grrr... Make some scrap pieces for each angle and test your depth and location, this should save your biscuit joiner and your project. GL

[cabinetman]

I'm making a stinking man's dresser valet. Found plans on the net that uses only biscuits for joinery. Well the box has 90, 45 and 22.5 degree angles and it's driving me crazy. Cutting the angles is no problem. Figuring out where to cut the slots so things line up as they should is making me nuts! Almost threw my bisuit cutter across the shop today. Made me even madder at myself.

I guess some days it just don't pay to chew your way out of the restraints.

My suggestion is to use traditional joinery. You'll have a better joint. I don't use biscuits or pocket screws, and they have been on top of my dislike list, and make efforts to dissuade their use.

.

[JimD]

I use pretty much all types of joints specifically including biscuits and pocket screws. The trick is to use them appropriately. I also have a benchtop dedicated mortiser and enjoy using mortise and tenon joints where they are needed or when I just feel like it. I use nearly exclusively dovetail joints for drawers (with a router jig, not hand cut (not enough patience for hand cut)). For utility cabinets, I also will just use screws and glue, sometimes but not always with a shallow dado (either pocket or through screws depending on how I want to hide the screw).

I'd have to see the plans to effectively comment on what I would do but I would say that biscuits mainly help with alignment, they don't add a lot of strength to the joint. One of the magazines, I think it was Wood, tested joints in a simulation of a rail to stile type joint. Biscuits did surprisingly poorly and pocket screws surprisingly well. But traditional mortise and tenon were clearly be best. In some cases, a simpler spline joint may be preferable to biscuits. If you are having to force biscuits to work for this project, it may be time to consider other joints.

I made a house worth of interior doors mainly with biscuit joints. I wouldn't do this again, with a dedicted mortiser mortise and tenon are pretty easy, but the doors worked fine. I mainly use mine now when glueing up a large panel. They help to keep the boards reasonably aligned during glueup. For structural situations, there is usually a better joint to use.

Jim

[gjat]

My suggestion is to use traditional joinery. You'll have a better joint. I don't use biscuits or pocket screws, and they have been on top of my dislike list, and make efforts to dissuade their use.

.

What/which joinery would you use for what he's trying to do?

[cabinetman]

What/which joinery would you use for what he's trying to do?

If you can do traditional joinery, could you answer that without seeing a sketch of the project?

.

[JR]

Figuring out where to cut the slots so things line up as they should is making me nuts!

I've had plenty of problems with biscuit joinery, but that's not one of them. A single pencil mark accross two adjoining pieces usually does it for me. There's enough play available with biscuits that any minor alignment problems can usally be addressed at assemblty time. I would have thought you'd have more trouble setting the joiner's fence to 22.5. THAT would trip me up!

I guess some days it just don't pay to chew your way out of the restraints.

Pretty funny. I'll have to remember that one...

[phrog]

My suggestion is to use traditional joinery. You'll have a better joint. I don't use biscuits or pocket screws, and they have been on top of my dislike list, and make efforts to dissuade their use.

.

Just wonder what you think about the use of dowels in edge-to-edge joining of two narrow boards to make a wider board? How do you accomplish edge-to-edge joints? Thanks.

[cabinetman]

Just wonder what you think about the use of dowels in edge-to-edge joining of two narrow boards to make a wider board? How do you accomplish edge-to-edge joints? Thanks.

Well, it's like this. It depends on what's being glued. If it a series of boards being glued up for a panel, or a top, the edges should be prepared to have a good flat fit to each other. They should both be 90 degrees to the faces, and straight.

In considering using dowels, all their alignments would have to be perfect. Which means the holes drilled have to be in perfect alignment with each other. The point is, that in the setup which includes all the gluing of the holes and the dowels, and the edges, takes time. If one dowel is off even slightly, the boards will likely not come together.

For that type of glue up, just two good mating edges, glue, cauls, and clamps is all I would use. This glue up is a long grain to long grain, and makes for good joints.

.

[Black wallnut]

If you can do traditional joinery, could you answer that without seeing a sketch of the project?

.

Google is your friend.... My guess would be this one.

What plate joiner are you using and what specific joint are you having issues with? Some joints are not intuitive.

[phrog]

Well, it's like this. It depends on what's being glued. If it a series of boards being glued up for a panel, or a top, the edges should be prepared to have a good flat fit to each other. They should both be 90 degrees to the faces, and straight.

In considering using dowels, all their alignments would have to be perfect. Which means the holes drilled have to be in perfect alignment with each other. The point is, that in the setup which includes all the gluing of the holes and the dowels, and the edges, takes time. If one dowel is off even slightly, the boards will likely not come together.

For that type of glue up, just two good mating edges, glue, cauls, and clamps is all I would use. This glue up is a long grain to long grain, and makes for good joints.

.

Thanks, C'man.

[Sweet Willy]

Using biscuits is not hard. I'm just not that bright. I do use them fairly often. Just not the way I'm using them this time. The one that gave me the biggest problem (and it shouldn't have) was where I put a 45 deg. up to a ninety deg. Now that I've struggled through this one, the next time will be fairly easy. I hope.

[JimD]

If it is the project Mark illustrated, joining the vertical to the horizontal carcase pieces seems like a reasonable use of biscuits. The only issue I see is with putting the slots into the horizontals. That would seem to require a fence - a separate straight board clamped to the workpiece for the jointer to align to while the slot is cut. You could use mortise and tenons or dowels but I probably wouldn't. A stopped spline or a really short tenon, like 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch that also stops short of the end are other good options IMHO. But biscuits would be quicker and totally acceptable to me for that project. I would make the height of the verticals such that I could use machine cut dovetails for the drawers. I like to use a template with 7/16 spacing so the drawer heights have to be multiples of 7/8 inch (they don't totally have to but it's a lot easier if they are). 1 3/4 inch high look like it might work well. So the verticals would be 1/16 to 1/8 more than that.

Jim

[LCHIEN]

Dowels are very unforgiving, they need to be perfectly aligned, every one of them, not only in the X- and Y- directions but the drilling also needs to be aligned presumable exactly perpendicular to the face.

I find biscuits quite easy to use for face and edge joining. The vertical alignment is set by the fence and the slot provides for a little freedom of horizontal placement. But at an angle other than 0 and 90, I'm uncomfortable and haven't tried it.