Biscuit Joiner: Reinforce Miters

Making miter joints is a great skill to have in your arsenal because they provide strength along with beauty. The beauty comes from concealment of the end grain, and the strength is enhanced by adding concealed reinforcing spline. Splines can be difficult to conceal, but that is where biscuit joinery can help. A biscuit provides a perfect mechanism to strengthen a miter joint without revealing the reinforcement. Another valuable attribute that biscuits add to miter joints is an alignment aid. By adding a biscuit to the miter joint, the joint is much easier to pull together in perfect vertical alignment at glue up time, which allows you to focus your attention on horizontal alignment of the corners.

You will need to keep a few things in mind when creating miter joints that are reinforced by biscuits;

Know the slot length before you cut. As you plan for the size of biscuit that you will use, and where you will place it in a miter joint, also look at the length of the slot that will be cut to accept the biscuit. You’ve chosen a biscuit because it can be concealed, so don’t overlook this important step and cut a slot that will not conceal your biscuit.

Familiarize yourself with your biscuit joiner’s capabilities. Biscuit joiners vary in the functionality that their fence can provide. Some biscuit joiners have a fence that can rotate 90 degrees, while others can rotate to 135 degrees for miter joinery applications. If your biscuit joiner will only rotate to 90 degrees, don’t worry, George provides a helpful workaround for you.

Use creative methods wherever necessary. In some situations a miter joint will be too small to conceal a biscuit. Watch the cool trick that George uses in such situations.

After you master using biscuits in your miter joints, perhaps you are ready for a class on cabinetmaking.