What Is a Biscuit Joiner Used For?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Kevin and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you to build a box using a biscuit joiner, which is very old and tried and true method of joining solid wood and plywood. What this machine does, is it has a very small blade that comes out as you can see here and cuts a half oval into whatever wood that you're cutting into. Then, on the other piece you want to join, you cut the exact same hole and then you join those two using a biscuit and so what ends up happening is, you have a little slot like this, you put glue in, you put glue on the biscuit, slide it in there, take your other piece that you've cut the piece for and then join them together with glue so that you get a nice perpendicular joint. You can also use it to join and align board that would go face to face if you need to get that alignment down just perfect or on table tops when you're gluing up two boards edge to edge, you can use them as an alignment tool although its not necessary because you'd have long grain to long grain contact, which is very strong. Biscuits don't necessarily add a lot of strength unless you're going to use them in case goods as they're commonly referred to which is what we've got here and we've got here. This is out of plywood and so biscuits are very perfectly orientated for that. Also with this bamboo, although technically grass, is exactly the same as solid wood. It expands and contracts along its grain, and so what we'll do here, is we'll have a biscuit that will join these two along this edge, which without a biscuit would be end grain into long grain and would not create any strong joint. The biscuit joiner is a good, quick economical alternative to cutting joinery with a table saw and many other methods that would take a lot longer, so its economical, its time saving. Also, this allows you to avoid putting screws, visible screws, so that you get a nice, clean look on that bamboo without anything obscuring the look of it. It allows you to have these points of connection and it sort of adds a finer furniture look to what is otherwise a very economical means of joiner your typical cabinetry sort of project. What I'll be showing you is to how to use the joiner safely and also a couple little tricks that are going to help your project come out a lot cleaner in the end."