I’m building a set of cubbies. While I tried to plan it out as much as possible before-hand, my lack of experience means that I’ve run into the occational suprise. I’ve been able to work around most of them, but I’ve run into a problem trying to cut biscuit slots away from the edge of the board.
This project is a grid of 12″x12″ cubbies, 3 across and 4 tall. The horizontals are continuous across the case and dadoed into the case sides. I’ve got 12″ verticals to put in to form the cubbies, but using my Porter Cable 557 plate jointer, I can’t cut FF biscuit slots anywhere in the face of the plywood except near the edges. The motor housing sticks out about the same distance as the smaller blade needed to cut the FF slots.
Unless I’ve missed some type of adjustment to the unit, I’m guessing I’ll have to switch back to the larger blade and experiment with shims to the face of the jointer until I can get a slot that’s close to the FF slot. If my geometry is correct, I’ll never get the slot exactly the right size and shape, but I could at least be able to match the depth.
Anyone got any ideas/suggestions that might save me some trial & error?
Replies
It looks like my best bet may be to set the jointer for "D" biscuits and add a 1/4" shim. That seems to give me the same depth as a FF biscuit slot. Its a little wider, but for this particular application, I don't think that will be too much of a problem.
However, I'm still open to suggestions!
It's been a while since I've used the PC557 with the FF biscuits, but my first thought is to ask about the little lever underneath the blade cover. It needs to be in a different position for the FF blade. Can't recall it's exact purpose, but it does have something to do with plunge travel.
Waddaya mean it wont fit through the door?
I've flipped the lever, and you're right, it does have something to do with plunge travel, but my problem is that the leading edge of the 2" blade and the front edge of motor housing pretty much line up with one another. When I attempt to plunge into the wood, the motor housing bottoms out before the blade makes contact.
Maybe I don't completely understand what you are doing, but why don't you just use bigger biscuits?
Or skip them entirely and dado the verticals into the horizontals.
I can't use bigger biscuits because I'm biscuiting top and bottom. FF is the largest biscuit that dosn't cut more than halfway through my 3/4" plywood.
I picked biscuits over dados because I thought it would be easier, and I didn't want to compromise the strength of my horizontals by thinning them down in spots (while it may not really have too much effect on the strength of the board, I took this particular moment to be anal about something).
Now, I can't switch from biscuits to dadoes because the woods already been cut to size.
You could stagger the biscuits, two on top, three on the bottom, or whatever. The biscuits are not doing much besides keeping the pieces straight, and fewer, larger biscuits will do that better than a lot of FF biscuits.
I thought about staggering the biscuits early on in my planning, but I thought uniformity might be best. I'm worried I'll end up confusing myself, so I had since forgotten the idea.
However, in light of my current problem, that may not be such a bad idea.
Thanks.
A #0 biscuit is 15mm wide so the slot is around 8mm (5/16") deep. I'd recommend this instead of the FF biscuits.
Charles M
Freud America, Inc.
The FF biscuit setting requires that the fence get dropped down. I have used 0, 10, and 20 biscuits all the time in 3/4" plywood. Why do you insist that it not go more than 1/2 way through? The biscuits do not need to be in exactly the same position so alternating (as seems to have already been suggested) should work just fine. Even if you don't want to overlap, put in one side, let them set up, then put in the other side. If you cut into a biscuit, no big deal
Eliminate biscuits altogether.
Use thru-dados, cutting halfway through each board depthwise, and assemble.
Because biscuits are simply convenient versions of splines, how about routing blind grooves into the horizontal pieces where you want the vertical partitions to be, and then cut corresponding grooves on the tops and bottoms of the verticals, and then finally assembling the parts with splines that are the same length and thickness as the grooves that were cut? That way, you can still use the verticals that you already have on hand and keep the dimensions you originally planned on.
Tejonista, Orange County, Calif.
Thanks, Tejonista. That's not a bad idea. I might do that.
It be easier if I hadn't alread edgebanded the front and back of my verticals!
I had the same problem with the porter cable yesterday. Very frustrating. I agree with other posters that your best bet is to stagger the biscuits and use a larger size. I didn't have that option, but I found two strips of 80 grit self stick sand paper applied to face of the machine made the surface flush with the fence. This worked fine as I only needed this for one of the mating slots, if you did this for both slots you might need to make the depth of cut a little deeper
Thanks,
Eric
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