This article is from Issue 21 of Woodcraft Magazine.

Cutting Slots In Mdf Wall
Cutting Slots In Mdf Boards

Because biscuit joints are easy to mark out and quick to cut, using one almost seems like cheating. In truth, biscuits may not be as strong as some traditional types of joinery and may not be suitable for heavy-duty loads, but they’re perfect for plenty of projects. Woodworkers and carpenters have been employing biscuits to successfully solve all sorts of assembly and alignment problems for over two decades. The easiest way to appreciate their versatility and strengths is by putting them to use.

The safest way to cut biscuit slots is with a biscuit joiner. This tool is designed to do nothing but plunge-cut arc-shaped slots. (Unlike the router/biscuit-cutting bit combo, the biscuit joiner’s cutter retracts inside the tool as you pull it away from your work.) From there, a flat, football-shaped piece of compressed wood, called a biscuit, fits into a pair of matching slots.

How to Cut a Slot for a 1/4 Plywood to Fit. A dado blade is useful for cutting 1/4-inch slots. This type of cut is often made to install plywood bottoms in drawers, for dividers in cabinets. To cut out the main portion of the slot, you'll drill a series of overlapping holes. You'll then clean the up the walls of the slot with a chisel, a file, and sandpaper. Part 1 Setting up the Drill. This is a quick guide on how to cut t-Molding for your arcade machine. If you are working on a DIY arcade machine, then this will help you understand how to. In addition, if you are cutting wood that is more than 0.5 inches, you will require a bigger tool. Cut-off wheels are known to be small but straight bits, on the other hand, are the best when cutting wood. When you purchase a Dremel rotary tool, you might get a cutting kit that offers you a variety of attachments to use. Therefore, the purchase of ready-cut MDF plates from wholesale is not worthwhile. In the picture gallery, we show some parts of the loudspeakers that Mr Colier has made with its high-Z CNC milling machine, in consideration of the appropriate feed rates and cutting speeds, to finally create high-end speakers.

What makes biscuits better than dowels? The size and shape of the slot. The oversized slot lets the biscuit move slightly, enabling you to tweak parts into perfect alignment. However, once glued, the biscuits swell and lock the parts in place.

You can master basic biscuit joiner use in five minutes, but you will continue to learn new tricks with each project. Following are some common joints that you can practice making to familiarize yourself with a new tool or get better reacquainted with your old workhorse.

begin with the two slot test

A biscuit joiner should cut a slot slightly deeper than half the width of the biscuit you’re trying to fit. This space provides some wiggle room, but still ensures that about half remains on each side of the joint. Here’s how to check your joiner’s depth setting. First, make a test slot. Next, stick in a biscuit and mark a pencil line where the biscuit touches the wood, as shown in Photo 1. Now flip the biscuit and mark a second line. Adjust the depth-setting dial on your tool so that overlap is about 1/8', as shown in Photo 2.

THE face-TO-edge BISCUIT JOINT

To cut the biscuit slots for the shelf, draw a pencil line across the inside face of the side and clamp the edge of the shelf against the line. Next, mark your biscuit slot marks on the top of the shelf. Resting the biscuit joiner on its base, place it on the side and cut the slot for the shelf as in Photo C. The base also serves as your reference when slotting the sides. Turn the joiner on its head, use the line engraved on the bottom of the tool to align it with your slot marks, and plunge it into the side, Photo D. Once cut, insert biscuits into the grooves and flip the shelf up on the location line.

Stick the board’s end over the edge of your bench so that the fence, not the tool’s base, sets the slot depth.

Balance the biscuit joiner’s fence on the end of the side panel to cut the grooves in the face.

Face-to-edge joints are the bread-and-butter joint for biscuit joiners. A biscuit joiner can cut the needed joints to assemble a cabinet in about as much time as it takes to drag a heavy sheet of MDF to your table saw.

Building a simple box provides a good opportunity to explore the advantages and disadvantages of fence- or base-guided slot cutting. Sometimes, you’ll have the freedom to choose the method, but sometimes the decision is made for you. Box-making uses both.

First, position the side and end panels together and draw lines across the joint to mark where you want a biscuit. (As a rule of thumb, place the biscuits about 6' apart.) When you pull the panels apart, you should see marks on the edges and ends.

To cut the grooves in the edge of the end panel, place the work flat on the workbench, as shown in Photo A. Adjust the fence so that the blade cuts a slot roughly through the center of your work. To cut the face grooves in the side, you’ll balance the fence on the panel’s edge as shown in Photo B.

Remove or retract the fence and use the joiner’s base to cut the slots in the end of the shelf.

Don’t move your wood; just flip your joiner so that the base rides against the shelf. Plunge the joiner into the side.

Biscuit Sizes

To cut grooves for most of the biscuit sizes (0, 10, 20), simply adjust the stop on your biscuit joiner. Smaller FF (or face frame) biscuits are available for the Porter-Cable biscuit joiner. To use these mini biscuits, you’ll need to switch out the standard 4' dia. cutter with a smaller 2' dia. blade.

THE END-TO-EDGE AND MITERED BISCUIT JOINTS

Biscuits are also an easy way to build mitered and end-to-edge frames that you would use for picture frames or for a cabinet’s face frame. In this case, biscuits are very useful because they are adding reinforcement to otherwise weak end-grain joints.

Start by selecting the right biscuit. An easy way to do this is to position the joint together then arrange one or more biscuits on top. Drawing a center line on a test biscuit can help you lay out the slots as shown in Photo E. Wider biscuits provide more strength (even if you saw off an end), but there are times when you want the biscuit to be hidden within the joint. When form is as important as function, use the Biscuit Sizing Chart on page 13. When picking a biscuit, don’t forget the wiggle room. The slot is usually about 3/16' wider than the biscuit you’re trying to fit.

When slotting narrow pieces, don’t hand-hold the stock. Because a portion of the blade will be exposed while making the cut, and since the spinning blade can “walk” if the tool or work isn’t properly held in place, it’s too easy to get hurt. Eliminating the risk of a visit to the ER is easy: simply clamp narrow pieces to a stopblock as shown in Photo F.

You can now align the center mark on the joiner with the marks on your stock and make the cut. After making the cuts, glue the biscuits into their slots and clamp the frame together. Once the glue has dried, you can slice off the protruding biscuit tip as in Photo G.

Position the bigger biscuit so that it won’t protrude into the visible inside edge of the frame.

Use clamps and extra backup, not your free hand, when cutting narrow stock.

Saw off the biscuit tip with a handsaw or using your table saw and crosscut sled.

Double-Biscuit Joinery

Biscuits don’t fare well when matched against other joints in wood-joint torture tests. Because biscuits are relatively short, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this joint isn’t as strong as traditional mortise-and-tenon or half-lap joints.

An easy way to strengthen a biscuit joint is to cut two grooves, as shown at right. In seconds, you’ve doubled the gluing area of the joint. Try to leave a ¼'- to ½'-strip of wood between the biscuits to maximize available gluing surfaces and preserve the strength of the wood. (With careful spacing, you can use the double-biscuit technique on a ¾'-thick rail and stile joint.)

To cut the grooves, I prefer to use spacers instead of my fence. Referencing the joiner and working against my bench is fast, and for those times when I forget to cut a slot, easily repeatable.

face miters

Face miters are A way to hid

Cutting Slots In Mdf