Hi everyone,
I live the Philippines, where the biscuit cutter is not a very popular woodworking tool. (You can't buy it from True Value even if you wanted to.) I think it's a useful item to have around the shop and i might be able to get one on my trip to the US. I was wondering if there was an easy way of manufacturing the biscuits in the event my supply runs out.
cheers, Mel rommelmtxAT yahooDOTc0m
Rommel Tiongco asks:
Short answer is no. The biscuits are precisely sized compressed beech. They shouldn't be all that difficult to order as hundreds of them are light, not bulky.
Charlie Self "When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose." Dwight D. Eisenhower
Possible? Sure, anything's possible.
Easy? Pragmatic? No. They're manufactured to some pretty tight tolerances. They're compressed and supposed to expand when wetted with glue. I think you'd spend a month of Sundays crafting a handful of them.
I'm guessing you haven't had much luck finding someone that'll ship them there? If not, then I'd load up on bags of them - Rockler sells big bags. Ask around to see if you can find some other woodworkers there to spread the costs.
I'll bet if you load up on them - you'll find the inherent humidity swells them and makes them difficult to use over time. But, it's pretty easy to restore them back to their original thickness - I put about 20-24 of them in my microwave for three 20 second blasts. Then let them cool for a few minutes and into a ziplock storage bag.
Storage in humid conditions could become a problem, though. The'll swell and be harder to install and less effective unless kept nice and dry.
Precsion made/compressed, not something you can cobble together at home Idea is that when you apply water based glue, the biscuits not only glue into place, but they SWELL and lock the joint into place
I buy in BULK, then store in the vacumn packages/bag like the FoodSaver brand. Break up into something like quart sized amounts, and package. When you open a package, move to a quart sized Ball jar
Humidity is the enemy here, will cause the biscuits to swell and no longer fit in the precut slots.
John
I'm not certain, but isn't the voltage in the Philippines different to the USA? (USA has 110V outlets.) If you're 240V, you'll have to get it from somewhere like my island - Australia.
Look here:
Allan.
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