In the world of woodworking, biscuits are pre-made ovals of compressed hardwood that are used to generate simple, strong joints between bits of wood. It shows the way the "plunged biscuit" approach can be an advantage sometimes, and ways to make it happen is likely to woodworking. Click below to view a video that shows how all this ongoing works. I’ve also included a video transcript below the video window so you can follow and find out better. The traditional approach is by using a special saw - called a biscuit joiner - to cut slots in both sides of bits of wood being joined, swab some glue in the slots, insert one biscuit into each slot, then bring the wood together and tight clamp it. That’s what you below see in the photo, and there are good reasons to create this way. This works well amazingly, but there’s also a non-traditional way biscuits can be used to reinforce joints after they go together, not before.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: 00:09 With this video, I wish to show you a technique which i find pretty valuable. So that it just sort of sits over top. That is an obscure project, and you’re not likely to have to do work like this probably, but the technique is universal quite, so I want one to here look at this section. Which means this frame sits below a pyramid cap such as this, and then there’s trim around the sides and trim on the bottom, and that’s what creates this box newel cap. This fits on top of a good wood box with panels in it. 00:19 Right now, I’m working on making some caps for the box newel staircase railing. This can be a one-inch diameter, bull-nosed profile, and it comes from this frame here. This is a completed cap off a railing which i made six or seven years back. It’s not something I’ve seen used frequently before, but I keep using it over and over and it’s quite helpful.
01:13 But what I wish to show you now could be how I assemble and reinforce these joints. They need to be nice and tight on the outside corners, and that’s what we’ve got here. The glue is holding them together, but the glue isn't strong enough for a credit card applicatoin like this alone. Now, the real way I really do this is by cutting the parts in a 45 degree angle, and I assemble them with glue only. 02:12 Now, before I go on and explain it, you might be wondering what these clips are all about. What I am concerned about is how these joints fit together. And that’s where this system comes in. There’s no dowels or biscuits or any kind of reinforcement inside, which approach lets me adjust these miter joints so that they fit really well. Now, in this case, this frame is only going to be seen across the edge, so I’m not concerned about what happens on the top and bottom, at least visually.
They’re an excellent little thing. It’s a non-issue really. 02:45 So glued, clamped, and dried, and I’m prepared to demonstrate the technique I’m talking about. It’s an excellent tool really. It does leave just a little mark within the wood, but after finishing and sanding, that much disappears pretty. And it has to do with biscuits installed in kind of a unique way. They’re a spring-loaded clip. They go on with a couple of pliers such as this, plus they hold miter joints together very well. So you’ll see with this one here, I’ve got some lines here marked. They have a pointy tip and they grip in to the wood and draw it together. These lines show me where I can place the biscuit joiner. This technique is quite useful whenever you have to reinforce a joint that has to be precisely aligned and it doesn’t really matter what the area of reinforcement appears like afterwards.
You see, I don’t need to get too close to the outside edge, because then the slot how the biscuit joiner cuts is going to extend out too much and I’m likely to see it. This can be a number 20 biscuit. I’ll line it up here just. But since I need to get the most strength out of this biscuit in this plunged application, I’ve adjusted the machine so that it cuts more deeply than usual. This biscuit is going to there sink in about to, woodshop because I want as much from the biscuit as possible in the slot. A regular biscuit slot would cut a slot deep enough for half the width of the biscuit. 04:14 So this is what it appears like. And I don’t want to do that. 03:38 So I’ve done some measurements plus some test cuts and this biscuit joiner is adjusted to cut a biscuit slot that’s not actually typical.