biscuit strengh

Every one keeps saying how glue is stronger than wood. If this is true then biscuits are only there to align the wood (assuming there is no other set alignment such as rabbets or dadoes) during glue up. The biscuits would, therefore, be superfluous. If this is not true, then the joint is no stronger than the wood beyond the glue and biscuits anyway.

Then again it takes less time to throw another biscuit or two into the mix than it does to worry about it.

I biscuit at about 10” intervals or so.

-- arborial reconfiguration specialist

I agree with Catspaw. If more biscuits make you feel better, go for it, but I don’t think they are necessary.

-- Charlie M. "Woodworking - patience = firewood"

Mission76, Just because the plans call for using biscuits doesn’t preclude you from constructing the cabinet another way. If you normally use dados and rabbits in your construction then I don’t see why you couldn’t in this project. Just my 2 cents. pkennedy

-- P Kennedy Crossville, TN

biscuits really don’t add any considerable strength. you should be much better off going with a dado or better yet a sliding dovetail. like said above the glue is harder than the wood so the real strength comes in the wood joints. dado’s, dovetails, mortise and tenons, and the like. biscuits would not help you in a bookcase situation because if you are using solid wood you would have a long grain on end grain and that is a really weak glue joint. so the glue wouldn’t be helping much. you really want a dado or a sliding dovetail because it gives the wood strength. the glue helps but when you thing about it most of the contact is still end grain to long grain. so the strength comes in the joint and the glue really holds it all together.

you could use a festool domino instead of biscuts, they are much stronger and just as easy.

-- Roper - master of sawdust-

the only problem with buying a festool is it’s about $600 more than a biscuit joiner.
I wouldn’t depend on biscuits to add any strength, i’ve only used them for alignment only.

-- Joey, Magee, Ms http://woodnwaresms.com

and worth every penny.

-- Roper - master of sawdust-

thanks for the help, the reason why I was using biscuits was because I just wanted to try out some other methods for case construction other than my usual dado and rabbets. I went ahead and finished the biscuits today and while it worked and seems to be fine, I will probably never do it again. Rabbets and dados are so much easier then this method.