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Rant: I thought biscuits in a drawer were a gimmick until a 68 year old finisher proved me wrong
I have always built drawers with metal slides and thought biscuit joints in drawer boxes were a waste of time. Last month I was building 14 drawers for a kitchen in Tacoma and the finisher, a guy named Ray who has been at it for 40 years, asked why I was not using biscuits on the corners. I told him glue and screws had never let me down. He grabbed one of my boxes, twisted it, and it racked maybe a quarter inch. Then he took an offcut, cut two biscuits, glued it up, and it did not move at all. He said the glue alone does most of the work and the biscuit just keeps things lined up while it dries. I ran the rest of the batch his way and every box went together square on the first try, no fighting the clamps. Now I am wondering what else I have been writing off because my dad did it one way. Anyone here still skip biscuits on drawers, or did you switch at some point?
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oscarc531mo ago
Watching that rack test says more than any jig setup video ever could. Here is the part nobody mentions though, biscuits swell from the glue and that swelling is what locks the joint tight, so if you use too much glue or let it sit too long before clamping you can actually split the drawer side right at the biscuit slot. I have seen it happen on cheap pine boxes. The real trick Ray probably knows is that the biscuit gives you maybe thirty seconds of wiggle time to get the box square before the wood swells and grabs, which is why your clamps stopped fighting you. Skip biscuits on plywood drawers if you want, but on solid wood they are doing more than just lining things up.
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