joinery systems pocket screws biscuits dominoes and dowels I'm going to show you an easy way to quickly decide which system to use and I'll give you some objective numbers to back it up so that you can rest easy knowing that your furniture projects will last let it be said right now that this video like all my other videos is targeted towards the beginner to intermediate home hobbyist woodworker who does not make nor sell a lot of furniture to customers because who wants to deal with customers not me to me there are joinery systems and there are traditional joints a joinery system like the Domino or dowels is a system that uses a jig or a specific tool that makes a sort of universal joint traditional joints like the mortise and Tenon or the dovetail use Universal tools or machines to create a joint for a specific scenario pocket screws are sometimes kiboshed by many Woodworkers but they're used in many professional applications and can definitely do the job if used appropriately are they as strong as some other systems or traditional joints no definitely not but that shouldn't deter you from using them pocket screws are an easy way to get started joining wood if you're a beginner it's one of the less expensive systems you can buy into and it will work in many joinery situations I've never been a fan of these smaller clamp on jigs because they tend to wander around on you while you're drilling but a larger stationary jig is only about $100 and it makes a world of a difference and you can work faster too another benefit of pocket holes is that you don't need to wait for glue to dry to continue on working I'm not saying you don't need glue far from it but the pocket screws will hold everything just fine until the glue dries all the same I would be a little selective about where and when you use these you can't always conceal them like in case joinery they'll end up on the outside but they do work for drawer boxes where the front will conceal them they're are going to do just fine in situations where there won't be much stress on them like built-in plywood Cabinetry or when I needed to put a divider in the drawer cabinet in my workbench but if you're using pocket screws to attach aprons to table legs don't go all Coyote Ugly on it let me take a moment to talk to you about a concept that I invented I call it the cost time strength triangle and know you haven't seen anything like it before I don't know what you're talking about I'm going to place pocket screws right here because although they're not necessarily stronger they're inexpensive and they're very very fast in any way you think about them I'm making broad generalizations here to make things a little easier to see the big picture but how do you know how fast they actually are well I made five test joints using 2 and 3/4 in popler and timed how long it took me to drill the pocket holes and screw them together I removed the highest and lowest values averaged out the middle three and the result was 57 seconds per joint seems pretty fast to me but we'll see how they compare with the other joinery systems soon my final verdict with pocket screws is that they're good for getting started in Woodworking and they're good in specific situations where the utmost strength is not required but they can't be guaranteed to stand up to the test of time in many places in Standalone Furniture builds I'm just going to go ahead and say it I think biscuits are kind of whatever there are a few inherent flaws which I'll get to in a minute the biscuit itself is inexpensive but the Joiner is going to run you at least a couple hundred a biscuit is essentially a spline that goes into a slot that is cut by a small saw blade that you Plunge Into The Joint biscuits are pretty darn wide and even the smallest one cuts a slot that's 2 in wide and that size biscuit doesn't give you much holding power at all the more common number 20 biscuit cuts a 3in wide slot so as you can already tell the biscuit joiner isn't going to work for everything another thing that bugs me about biscuits is the inconsistent fit that they have the slots are all the same thickness but the biscuit itself can vary and is usually pretty loose one bit of conventional wisdom that gets tossed around a lot is that the biscuit is supposed to swell and create a tight fit but that simply hasn't been my experience more often than not I'm Fring around with lining up the joint after gluing while trying to clamp it tight this is especially frustrating when I've used biscuits specifically for aligning panel glue-ups the biscuit joiner itself is pretty simple to operate you just have the fence height setting and the plunge depth setting you essentially just have to point and shoot which makes it a pretty fast operation how fast 1 minute and 33 seconds on average which is 36 seconds slower than pocket holes and then you'll have to wait for the glue to dry however when I'm willing to wait the extra time I'm usually after something that will give me stronger results but how do you know how strong these joints are I can tell you that I'm experienced enough to know by now but that doesn't really help me convince you of anything so I did some testing here is the setup I have a test joint glued up with a biscuit clamped to my jig here with this bottle jack it's going to put pressure up on the joint and this bathroom scale is going to measure the force it's going to take for the jack to break the joint now it's all a little bit handwavy and not super precise but it'll give us a decent idea of how well each joint Compares against each other enough talk let's destroy things I'm recording the reading of the scale with my phone so you can better see what I'm seeing biscuit number one oh come on might have got 55 lbs out of that oh keeps going not really oh yeah yeah might have got 70 lb out of that now I did that five times total removed the highest and lowest values and got an average result of 68.7 lbs for the biscuit joint what does that mean well I did the same test for the pocket hole joint with glue and that got an average of 86.3 lb that's 17.6 lb stronger that's right pocket hole screws are stronger than biscuits and I'll be honest I was a little surprised by that now granted this is only one type of joint since you can join two boards together in a number of different orientations furthermore this radial or racking direction is only one way a joint can be stressed but it is quite common like for when you go all Coyote Ugly on that table of yours so biscuit I place the right here in the cost time strength triangle but honestly I can't recommend the biscuit joiner over pocket screws for most applications if you want fast but half decent alignment on panel glue-ups it'll do the job but for everything else I would favor most of the other options as you'll see in a minute probably the number one question from people who have never used the next joinery system is is do I need a Fest tool Domino and
