Biscuit use in table top

[ash]

I may just glue and clamp. I didn't see how thick the substrate is. I made veneer tops with wood edge as well as hpl laminate tops 1 1/2" thick substrate edge built down from 3/4" deck with a 3/4" edge glued and clamped only with no failures of the edge attachment ever.

3/4" edging applied with an edgebander is hot melt attached only, and does not fail in my experience. My machine was an SCMI B5L. That machine would typically only be used to apply 3/4 X 3/4 shelf edging.

Sometimes if I'm applying an apron to 3/4" material, if it's not bottom exposed, I may glue and clamp and then after the glue is dry, I'll screw it with Ritter type pocket hole screws.

[Steve N]

This might have a lot to do with peoples answers. I was using trim nails to do what a lot of you folks use a biscuit joiner to do. According to this, the Lamello joiner was first offered as a portable unit in 1968. I still can't afford what they were asking for them back then. So I am still using very inexpensive trim nails. That was a craze that passed me by.

I have however used biscuit jointers belonging to others, and I will contend on a sharp miter your biscuit will still allow slipping, where the nail will not. But mostly I answer as I do because it's what I know.

Ya buncha whippersnappers
 
 
 

[JGrout]

There is one other benefit to using a 23 gauge nail in that they are not terribly hard to move around for slight alignment issues 

I use both brads and biscuits depending on the application which is one place seems more appropriate.


that part can be based in logic or not; sometimes you get partway into it and go well that did not go like I expected

[kurt18947]

This is my understanding of how biscuit divots happen. Cut the slots in both pieces, slather on as much glue as possible - don't want a dry glue joint
. Insert the biscuits, wipe up the exccess glue and clamp it up. The wood swells around the biscuits due to using water based glue. Wait a couple hours and sand while the wood is swollen so you remove wood you shouldn't. Glue joints dry, wood shrinks back to where it was before glue and there's the divot where you sanded off wood you shouldn't have.

Solution? Don't glue as Phil suggested above is one fix. Or go light on the glue in the biscuit pockets so add less water? My understanding is that you want the biscuits to swell a bit to make a stronger glue joint. Wait to sand a couple days 'til the joint dries? That might work for hobbyists, it wouldn't for a shop where time matters. Use polyurethane glue that doesn't have water so doesn't swell the wood?