How to Shrink Wood Biscuits
George VondriskaGeorge Vondriska teaches you how to utilize the compression pressure from a metal-working vise to shrink wood biscuits that are just a little bit too big for the biscuit joinery slots on your woodworking projects. Just pop it into the vise, squeeze it tight and let it rest for a few seconds, and you'll be amazed how those wood biscuits that just wouldn't fit are now the perfect sizes.
I need to dry fit this project, make sure everything is going together okay. And the problem I'm already up against is that the biscuit that I would like to use in that slot is too big. I guess I could throw it out, but I bet if this one's a little bit too big, other biscuits in my collection are a little bit too big. What can happen is that biscuits are of course designed to soak up moisture from glue and swell up. Sometimes ambient humidity in the air is enough that they swell up and then they don't go in the slot.
We don't want this, we want something more like we have in this other biscuit. We should be able to slip it in and slip it out with just hand pressure. So let's fix this. What we need is a vice, drinking, smoking, gambling, any one of 'em will do. What we really need is a metal vice.
A wood vice won't work for this, 'cause what we're gonna do is just take advantage of the pressure we can get from the vice and putting the biscuit in between those metal jaws. Give that a good squeeze, and a little bit of resting time so that everything kind of catches up there. Now that that's been in the vice jaws a little bit, let's see what we got. That's what we want. What a difference, huh.
I couldn't even get that biscuit to go in there. Now it slips right in, slips right out. So this tip allowed me to salvage a biscuit that I otherwise would have been throwing in the garbage by taking advantage of the compression pressure that we can get from a metalworking vise.
For several years, I have been looking for a project/plan to build a man's valet. They look simple enough; the most complex parts will be a drawer and the hanger for the jacket or shirt. How about it -- could you do the project and make the plans available??