I've blathered a lot on the blog about the breach of routers but addition apparatus I use absolutely a bit is a biscuit joiner.

Wuzzat? A amusing banquet roll? Bread glue?

It's a apparatus I aboriginal saw TOH demigod, Norm Abrams, use aback in the 80s. Okay, let's be honest: Norm has a boutique abounding of bizarre, attenuated purpose tools. But a biscuit (or plate) accessory is absolutely useful, abnormally for edge-laminating boards as I'm about to do here. It can as well be acclimated to strengthen mitered corners or to admit alignment pins. I did the closing if I installed the abundant amber attack in my barn aperture surround.

A biscuit accessory is a mini-circular saw army angular on a bounce loaded handle. Its sole job is to cut a crescent-shaped aperture in a lath for an egg-shaped "biscuit", which is a section of (usually) beech copse or aeroembolism beech copse shavings. Functionally, the biscuit works like a dowel but after wards the arduous backbone of a dowel.

So why not use a dowel instead? Because dowels accept to be accomplished with a abundant accord of attention -- added attention than a lot of home tyromaniacs like me can achieve, abnormally on a continued lath with several dowels. A biscuit's contour makes it accessible to acclimatize the boards +- 1/16th inch afterwards final assembly... at atomic until the cement swells the biscuits and the boards lock assuredly into place.

Here, I'm edge-laminating a 1x3 section to a 1x8. (Ignore the baffled contour on the bend of the 1x3. That was from a bootless experiment. I'll cut it off after if I ad measurement the shelf, which needs to be 9-1/2" wide.) Why don't I just use a added board? Two reasons. One, a 1x10 is pricey. But mainly, laminating boards makes for a stronger and added abiding panel. The grains in the corresponding boards plan adjoin anniversary added to accumulate a console from cupping or twisting. Think "butcher's block".

Stock barge rarely has a aboveboard and beeline edge, abnormally if it's been sitting in a dry boutique like abundance for a few months. So the aboriginal footfall is to accomplish abiding the edges of the two boards are asleep beeline and perpendicular. I use my jointer/planer for that.