My 2008 One Board Furniture Build-Off Entry Part 3

The second new joinery technique i am using is biscuits, and because of the rules of this contest i am making my own from the very same hard maple board! In fact i cut strips off the stretcher boards specifically for creating my biscuits!

I devised a simple and effective way to create biscuits after studying the store bought variety, and it couldn’t be simpler! I started with strips cut off my stretcher pieces larger than the #10 biscuit blade used. When i cut the slots i made them longer than normal, and so my homemade biscuits are also longer. Shaping cuts of my biscuits were done on my bands aw, and then cleaned up by hand with a file, and then crushed in my metal vise.

Each biscuit was crushed to fit into the slot with the hopes of expanding once glued, and they turned out quite nicely! The glue was another matter!

I wanted to try using olde fashioned ‘Hide Glue’ for my pub table but ran into a few problems. First i bought a $7.99 (Target) crock pot with adjustable settings, and it worked EXCELLENT at cooking my glue, and i also bought some art brushes to apply the glue, they too worked well. What didn’t work so well was the glue! I used extra water for a longer set time as per the instructions but i was not happy with how the top pieces came together, the glue just didn’t let me pull each piece together properly, and after it dried you could see light through the joint, and i was not happy!

So i tried separating the two joints i glued up with ‘Hide Glue’ and that was another first! I used my shop iron and a lot of water and muscle, and in the end i was able to separate each piece without any major issues, other than my ugly iron! I decided to save the ‘Hide Glue’ for the legs, and went with my tried and true wood glue TiteBond III, and in the end the top came together beautifully!

As always, there are lots more photo’s on my personal website, including higher resolution photo’s browseable using my custom gallery!