Biscuit Jointer: Register Off the Fence
George VondriskaBiscuit joinery came onto the hobbyist woodworking scene in the 1990s, and woodworkers have been using biscuits heavily ever since. Nothing beats a biscuit joint when it comes to a quick, lightweight substitute for a traditional mortise and tenon joint, or a spline joint. A biscuit joiner essentially creates a slot into which a pressed wafer of wood, or a biscuit, is inserted to form a floating tenon joint. A mating slot is created on the work piece that will be joined, and the boards are joined with the strength of glue and the alignment of biscuits. With biscuit joinery, there are essentially two ways that you can align the tool to locate the biscuit slot. The first option is to use the base of the tool and register off the bottom. This approach is commonly used for plunging biscuit slots that are located somewhere other than the edge of the work piece. The second approach is to use the standard fence that comes as an integral component to the biscuit joiner itself. The fence provides a reference plane that can be adjusted to the height and angle that is desired for your project, giving great flexibility. Biscuit joiner fences are normally intuitive to operate, but like anything with woodworking, there are some “rules of the road” that you should learn to make it a better experience.
Consistency is key
If you use the fence of your biscuit joiner for one side of the joint, you should use it for both. If you reference off of the top of one piece, also be sure to reference off of the top of the mating piece.
Technique is critical
Biscuit joinery is a great alignment aid when it is done properly, but if sloppy technique is used, it can cause alignment nightmares.
Biscuit joiners are sure a wonderful tool, and they have come a long way from when I saw my first biscuit joiner a bunch of years ago. But the accuracy that comes with 'em is only gonna be present if you're using it correctly. And what I'm specifically talking about here is instances where you register off the bottom of the biscuit joiner or you register off the fence on the biscuit joiner. Here, we're gonna look at using the fence, why you use it, kinda what's the rule of the road for one or the other. So the rule of the road for the fence is gonna be if we use the fence for one cut, we should use the fence for all the cuts.
So one things, before I move stuff around too much, I wanna point out is that what's very convenient with many biscuit joiners about using the fence is there's a layout line commonly on the scale that shows you the center of 3/4-inch stock. So by putting the hash mark on the fence in line with the diamond here, that's automatically centering me from the fence down on 3/4-inch material. It's 3/4-inch material I'm using here, so that's where we wanna be. Of course, we can move the fence up or down as needed to get to other settings. Now, why using the fence?
well, here's what's going on. We're building a box, a bookshelf, something that's got outside corners to it. And outside corners means we're putting our parts together like this. So first step, I'm gonna hold 'em in that position, and I'm gonna locate a couple of biscuit slots. And we'll go ahead and cut this one first.
Now, I'm doing this one first 'cause it's kinda patently obvious on here I have to use the fence 'cause the fence is gonna rest on that end grain and allow me to make my cuts. Next step is where I've seen students get confused, and what sometimes they wanna do is clamp this piece to the bench, disable the fence, and make their cuts like this. Now, we're changing our reference face, and that's where things go badly. Reference face here on our first piece was off the top, was off the end grain. We need to also then reference off the top of this piece in order to maintain accuracy.
So instead of this setup, what we need is that and that. So again, it's a pretty simple rule, but you just gotta make sure you're being consistent. If we register off the top, the outside on one piece, like we did there, then we also need to register off the top or the outside on the mating piece, and that's what gonna get us that great alignment across those top edges. So make sure you're using that fence consistently, and you and your biscuit joiner use are gonna be perfect.
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