Popular Woodworking 2007-02 № 160, страница 54

Problems arise if you don't hold the work steady and you don't keep the tool flat. This simple jig will let you keep both hands on the tool and the workpiece from moving.

is a flat piece of Medium-density Fiberboard (MDF) or plywood, a smaller piece screwed down to one corner, and a third piece below the front edge to act as a hook to your bench. Attach the jig firmly to your bench with a clamp or a few screws, and mount a hold-down toggle clamp as shown above. This will hold your work safely, letting you keep both hands on the machine and it gives you a flat reference surface for the base of the tool.

If you need to make a j oint in the middle of a piece, such as a fixed shelf in a cabinet, clamp a guide block in line with the location of the bottom of the shelf and make the cut by plunging vertically. The guide registers the cut, and lets you use the broad face of the tool to hold it steady while you make the cut. Mark your registration lines on this block if you will be making repetitive cuts.

The other useless, obsessive activity people engage in is measuring the exact location of each slot. Just make a series of pencil marks by eye (as shown in the photo at right) to locate the cuts. It won't make any difference in the finished joint if there is some variation in the distance from plate to plate. And again, the variation in the locations will prevent you from putting parts together in a way you don't want them.

A guide block will locate the position of a shelf, and provide layout marks.

Get a Grip

To get a good cut, the piece that gets the slot needs to be firmly clamped to the bench. If you try to hold the work with one hand and plunge the tool with the other, you're giving away half the control you have. Put both hands on the machine, and put them in the right place. The handle on the top is there for a reason.

Most people ignore the handle and hold the fence down on the work with one hand. This tends to be self-defeating as you're still likely to tilt the tool as you make the plunge. It also introduces some risk; you're putting your hand in the path of a spinning saw blade. Accidents with biscuit joiners are rare, but if you put your hand on the handle you gain better control and you eliminate the risk of injuring yourself entirely.

Don't waste your time measuring and marking the exact locations of the plates. Hold the parts together and make your marks by eye.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

There are several sizes of biscuits available, but the #20 (at the bottom) is by far the most commonly used. I've often wondered why we in America call these thin wood joining plates biscuits. To me, a biscuit is thick and fluffy, not thin and hard, and I was introduced to the tool as a cookie cutter. The answer is in what happens in translation.

The inventor coined the term "holzlamelle," a combination of the German word for wood, and the French word for thin strip or plate. Nothing to do with baked goods, but a mouthful. One of the many German words for cookie was adopted in Europe.

When we go from German to English, this is one of the places where there is a difference between American English and British English. "Cookie" is a Dutch derivation and was used in America long before it was used in England. What we call a cookie, the English call a biscuit.

The English now use the term cookie, but limit its use to soft and chewy baked goods. A British tax case defined biscuits and cookies based on if they get hard or soft when they go stale. (The British court is silent on the subtle differences between wafers and crackers.)

When first imported to the United States, the name was translated with the British usage, and we adopted the term biscuit. The translation may be fuzzy, but we like the machine so well, we don't care what we call it.

—RL

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