# Biscuit joiner a good choice for cutting boards?



## harrywho (Jul 20, 2009)

I may have an opportunity to buy some cherry shorts today at a pretty good price. What I'm thinking is to make a bunch of flat grain cutting boards out of them. My question is would it be a good investment as far as speed in glueing and ease of alignment to buy a PC 557 biscuit joiner? The idea is to have as little time and material cost in them so I could sell them at a very reasonable price.
I've have no experence with a biscuit joiner and don't even know if useing one to make cutting boards is an idea worth pursuing. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Harry


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## CharlieM1958 (Nov 7, 2006)

Harry, biscuits help with alignment in some situations, but there is really no advantage, IMO, to using them in a simple glue-up like a cutting board. The glue joint will be plenty strong enough on its own, and the biscuits/slots have enough play that using them does not guarantee perfect flatness in your joint. I own a biscuit joiner and I'm glad I do, but I wouldn't use it in this application.


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

Do you have a router table? If so, you can buy a simple slot-cutting blade to use with biscuits. I have both & tend to use the router table for slotting. It's more convenient for me to stack boards on one side, run them over the table, and stack them on the other side. I know they'll all be cut the same. The biscuit joiner just seems a bit more awkward for me. Now a cordless biscuit cutter, then we could talk!


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## RickLoDico (Jan 7, 2010)

That would be a LOT more work without any benefit. Glue is all you need. Get a biscuit joiner anyway.


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## dbhost (Jul 20, 2009)

While I love my biscuit jointer for work like face frames, and even mitered door frames, this is just not a proper application of the tool, or joinery method…


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## sbryan55 (Dec 8, 2007)

I have to agree that a cutting board is not a project that would need biscuits for alignment. As Dbhost suggested, for face frames and miters a biscuit joiner is helpful with alignment issues but for a cutting board just clamps and glue, with some cauls , are all you need to keep it aligned.


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## Bertha (Jan 10, 2011)

Of course, I agree that no biscuits are required for this application. If cut by the router method I mention above, they'll likely just trap glue & introduce voids. You might want to consider wrapping those cauls with wax paper. I've had some that were determined to become part of the project!


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

I'd recommend trying it with dowels and without. The dowels are 
not needed for strength, but you may find you prefer the alignment
of doing the glue-ups with dowels. See what you like better.

Biscuits don't align as positively as dowels because they vary in thickness
and they have a problem with "telegraphing" through the wood. For
that reason I recommend not using them for your cutting boards.

If you get your stock precisely thicknessed, dowels can help you get your
glue-ups so accurate you can just knock off the dried glue, do a bit of
sanding and finish the boards. The main hassle of panel glue-ups is 
planing the finished panels flat, so better-aligned glue-up can help 
reduce the work of doing that.

If you've got good clamps (like the k-body style ones) you may find you can
get really acceptable glue-ups without too much fuss. There's no one
way to ensure speediest production of gluing up something like cutting
boards.


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## harrywho (Jul 20, 2009)

Thanks for the input guys, I think I may have known the answer before I asked it but I was trying to justify getting the PC 557 biscuit joiner. You know the feeling when you just want a new tool.
Now if I glued up some of the shorts (they are only 2 1/4" wide) I could try some boxes with mitered corners, would a biscuit joiner work to keep the miters lined up?
Thanks again,
Harry


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## LeeBarker (Aug 6, 2010)

I have two biscuit joiners and both mic as accurately as is possible-within a few thousandths. But there are still variables when you're cutting slots, and those seem to increase cutting slots in miters.

A miter joint is a pretty fair glue joint-not flat grain, not endgrain-so my recommendation is to miter them and clamp them with a band clamp and you can manually squnge them into shape.

When the glue cures you can do some spiffy things to strengthen and feature the joints, like contrasting splines or faux dovetails.

That's my $.02, marked down today only.

Kindly,

Lee


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## Petewood (May 14, 2010)

Domino.


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