dowel joint or biscuit joint?

[russ_1380]

Good replies guys, very informative!

Ok, so now I am well and truly spoilt for choice:

Biscuit
Dowel
Loose tenon
Domino

I think dowel will be ruled out from what people are saying.
Domino system seems too expensive for my budget at mo (£500?)

I will be buying a router at some point, so I could kill two birds with one stone if i go the loose tenon option. Can you buy pre made tenons for these joints, like buying biscuits? or do you have to cut them yourself?

Also, if I was using 1/2 inch MDF are loose tenons suitable or is 1/2 ich too thin a material.

Thank you everyone for your help

 

[Steve Maskery]

Can you buy pre made tenons for these joints, like buying biscuits? or do you have to cut them yourself?

Yes you can. Festool sell them. I don't know the price, but they are not as cheap as biscuits. On the other hand you can make your own by the yard, which you can't do with biscuits.

For 12mm MDF you really need a dom of no more than 5mm. Festool are about to bring out a 4mm dom, I gather. That would work. The liniting factor with all loose-tenon joinery is the depth of cut, and hence tenon length.

S

 

[HawkEye]

Nice work there Paul.

Can you buy pre made tenons for these joints, like buying biscuits? or do you have to cut them yourself?

Also, if I was using 1/2 inch MDF are loose tenons suitable or is 1/2 ich too thin a material.

I'd like to know this aswell, I have no experience of loose M&T either. I would be using a 6mm slot cutter router bit on 18mm mdf. Is this ok?

Also, how loose does the tenon have to be, is a tight fit not preferable?

 

[HawkEye]

Can you buy pre made tenons for these joints, like buying biscuits? or do you have to cut them yourself?

Yes you can. Festool sell them. I don't know the price, but they are not as cheap as biscuits. On the other hand you can make your own by the yard, which you can't do with biscuits.

For 12mm MDF you really need a dom of no more than 5mm. Festool are about to bring out a 4mm dom, I gather. That would work. The liniting factor with all loose-tenon joinery is the depth of cut, and hence tenon length.

S

So ideally about 1/3 and definately not more than half?

 

[Paul Chapman]

Also, how loose does the tenon have to be, is a tight fit not preferable?

What you need is a nice sliding fit but you must leave a way for excess glue to escape. Here's a test-piece where I made a loose oak tenon.

On the actual job, I grooved the tenon so that excess glue could escape. Like this - I used a scratch stock but a couple of saw cuts would do the job

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[wrightclan]

What I sometimes do if I am joining together two pieces, one of which is thick and the other thin, is to have, say, 2/3 of the biscuit in the thicker piece and 1/3 in the thinner piece. This is easy to do with the biscuit jointer I use (Elu DS140) because it has a continuously variable depth of cut. I'm not sure whether you can do this with all biscuit jointers, some of which I think have set depths of cut to suit the three sizes of biscuit.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

Hi, I haven't posted on here for awhile, but thought I'd add my two pence here. Yes, you can do what you described with a biscuit jointer that has preset depths. If you use the #20 setting into the thicker piece (e.g. a plywood shelf) and the #0 setting into the thinner stock (e.g. 1/2" hardwood edging) you will get a combined depth perfect for a #10 biscuit.

Brad

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hawkeye, yes, that's right.
Remember, this is loose tenon joinery - that is, Loose as in Separate, not Loose as in Sloppy.

Paul, nice job.
Another way is to make the tenon rectangular in section, just a tad narrower than the moretice, thenrout 45deg chamfers along the edges. It doesn't significantly compromise the strength and leaves pleanty of room for the air and glue to squeeze out.

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S

 

[Neil]

If you go down the biscuit jointer route, it might be worth looking at the AEG rather than something like the Clarke:
http://www.dm-tools.co.uk/product.php/section/7705/sn/AEGLF650
It has the nice Mafell-style depth turret (and a 3 year warranty I think?), and looks a bargain for £135 from DM or £100 from Ebay.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[HawkEye]

How do you actually make the tenon then?

A relatively simple way, in my mind, is to run a nosing line down both sides of a length of timber and then cut out the tenons individually from that piece. However, getting some 6mm thick hardwood at the desired width and length is a problem. Are they buyable?

 

[AndyT]

6mm thick hardwood at the desired width and length is a problem. Are they buyable?

I'd have thought offcuts of decent ply would be the best thing.

Andy

 

[Paul Chapman]

How do you actually make the tenon then?

In the example I showed above, I had eight to make. I planed up the eight pieces and then rounded over the edges using a block plane and rasp. Another option would be to leave the edges square and square off the ends of the mortice with a chisel - although rounding over the tenon is easier and takes only a couple of minutes.

You dont have to use solid wood for the tenons (or loose tongues). Other options would include plywood and MDF and if you could get these in thicknesses to match the router cutter used to cut the mortice (or groove in the case of loose tongues) it would save time and result in less work.

Cheers :wink:

Paul