ijam
Established Member
I'm feeling encouraged by the "Where is everyone?" thread, so here is a jig I cobbled together to biscuit joint battens onto the bottom of some saggy chipboard shelves.
I'm not sure that this deserves the word "jig"....
As you can see, the biscuit jointer is fixed in position. The piece of plywood clamped to the front leaves a shallow channel (A) between it and the fence the biscuit jointer sits on - this is sized to be slightly larger than the thickness of my shelves, allowing them to be slid past standing on edge.
Obviously the biscuit jointer is elevated in order to place the slots where I wanted them - at approximately the middle of the shelf.
The stop block (B) ensures that all the cuts are made at the same place. I used four size 0 biscuits per shelf, meaning a total of 192 cuts were needed. Using a stop block lets me make each set of cuts in turn, without any measuring.
So after cutting the first slot in all the pieces, the stop block was moved further to the right to make the second, third and fourth cuts in turn.
The other piece of wood (C) is used when cutting the slots for the battens. I wanted to be able to cut these at the same time as the shelves (without moving the stop block) to ensure that all the slots line up. Of course this meant I needed to raise the battens up off the table to align correctly with the biscuit jointer, and that's where this piece comes in. An extra strip of wood is screwed to the top for the battens to register against.
Here is that block in position:
Making the first cut in a shelf:
Some of the battens and shelves after making the first cut:
Making a second cut to a batten:
After a fair bit of biscuit slot cutting, and a few pauses to let the biscuit jointer cool down, I was ready to glue it all together. I used my recently purchased biscuit glue dispenser from Axminster (the cheapy version not a Dosicol). I was not impressed - it worked OK if you moved it through the slot, but was not any real improvement over my previous use of a fine nozzled glue bottle.
I didn't clamp them up - instead I stacked them all on top of each other and added some weight on top. I'll see tomorrow if that worked... :?
Finally, my Dyson vacuum happened to fit over the dust port of the biscuit jointer with only a little gap and this worked very well, picking up all the dust. Who would have thought you could get this much sawdust from cutting itsy-bitsy biscuit holes.... :shock:

What would I do differently next time? I think this worked very well, so I might trying drilling a couple of holes through the biscuit jointer's base plate and making a more sophisticated fence I can bolt it to securely.
I would also be more careful not to let go of a batten a second too early, launching it across the kitchen to crack the facia of my washing machine...
ciao
Ian
I'm not sure that this deserves the word "jig"....

As you can see, the biscuit jointer is fixed in position. The piece of plywood clamped to the front leaves a shallow channel (A) between it and the fence the biscuit jointer sits on - this is sized to be slightly larger than the thickness of my shelves, allowing them to be slid past standing on edge.
Obviously the biscuit jointer is elevated in order to place the slots where I wanted them - at approximately the middle of the shelf.
The stop block (B) ensures that all the cuts are made at the same place. I used four size 0 biscuits per shelf, meaning a total of 192 cuts were needed. Using a stop block lets me make each set of cuts in turn, without any measuring.
So after cutting the first slot in all the pieces, the stop block was moved further to the right to make the second, third and fourth cuts in turn.
The other piece of wood (C) is used when cutting the slots for the battens. I wanted to be able to cut these at the same time as the shelves (without moving the stop block) to ensure that all the slots line up. Of course this meant I needed to raise the battens up off the table to align correctly with the biscuit jointer, and that's where this piece comes in. An extra strip of wood is screwed to the top for the battens to register against.
Here is that block in position:

Making the first cut in a shelf:

Some of the battens and shelves after making the first cut:

Making a second cut to a batten:

After a fair bit of biscuit slot cutting, and a few pauses to let the biscuit jointer cool down, I was ready to glue it all together. I used my recently purchased biscuit glue dispenser from Axminster (the cheapy version not a Dosicol). I was not impressed - it worked OK if you moved it through the slot, but was not any real improvement over my previous use of a fine nozzled glue bottle.

I didn't clamp them up - instead I stacked them all on top of each other and added some weight on top. I'll see tomorrow if that worked... :?
Finally, my Dyson vacuum happened to fit over the dust port of the biscuit jointer with only a little gap and this worked very well, picking up all the dust. Who would have thought you could get this much sawdust from cutting itsy-bitsy biscuit holes.... :shock:

What would I do differently next time? I think this worked very well, so I might trying drilling a couple of holes through the biscuit jointer's base plate and making a more sophisticated fence I can bolt it to securely.
I would also be more careful not to let go of a batten a second too early, launching it across the kitchen to crack the facia of my washing machine...
ciao
Ian