Wood Magazine 57 by Larry Clayton

Author:Larry Clayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wood, Home and hobby woodworker
Publisher: Meredith Corporation
Published: 1992-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

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Blade changes:

Some models make it easy

You may only change your biscuit-joiner blade once in a great while, but when you do, you'll appreciate machines that simplify this process. Only two machines—the Lamello Top 10 and Virutcx AB-11—earned "excellent" ratings in this category. You can change the blades of both machines in under one minute, and you don't have to remove any parts to do so. The machines that earned "fair" ratings take longer, and have multiple parts such as small faceplate pins, springs, and screws that you must remove and can be easily lost in the changeover process.

Accessories expand the versatility of a biscuit joiner

As you can see in the chart at right, you can buy a number of accessories for biscuit joiners. Lamello carries more accessories than any other manufacturer, and many of these items, such as glue applicators, plastic clamping biscuits, solid-surface (Corian, Avon-ite) biscuits, hinge biscuits and knock-down aluminum biscuits, will work with any machine.

Several of the joiners come with dust bags, but we found that all of them had a tendency to clog with

the long, stringy shavings produced when cutting slots in hardwoods. Since biscuit joiners produce lots of shavings, we advise buying a machine with a vacuum attachment if you're concerned about dust collection.

Many of the manufacturers sell their own brand of biscuits. After trying all of them, we rate the Lamello biscuits tops because of consistently uniform thickness from biscuit to biscuit. Our local distributor sells Lamello biscuits for about the same price as other brands, so we think it pays to use Lamello biscuits, even if you can't afford a lamello joiner.

Gripping points: Choosing pins, plastic, or pads

With the exception of the Skil 1605:02, all portable biscuit joiners have some device on their faceplates for gripping the work-piece. The Skil machine has a ribbed faceplate made of a hard, nylon-reinforced plastic. Although we were able to cut most joints with this model, we had better control with the other units.

The photo below shows three basic options in gripping systems: (1) a rubber plate that surrounds the opening, (2) rubber pads in place of the pins, and (3) spring-loaded sharp pins on l>oth sides of the blade opening. All of these systems work well, but we prefer the rubber plate because it makes full contact with narrow work-pieces. Of the tested machines, only the Ryobi has such a plate.

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