Plate Joiner vs Biscuit Joiner

If you have been around a wood shop long enough or have been reading up online about different kinds of joinery tools.

You may well have heard both the term plate joiner and biscuit joiner and assumed they were in fact different tools.

Both a plate joiner and a biscuit joiner are the same thing just with different names.

Plate Joiner vs Biscuit Joiner

Biscuit joiner vs plate joiner - in the US they are more commonly referred to as a biscuit joiner in the UK and Europe you will probably hear the term plate joiner used more often.

A biscuit joiner can sometimes also be called a biscuit jointer.

Regardless of what you call them they are used to cut slots in stock wood using a spinning blade that is pushed outwards and into the wood.

One cut is made in each piece of wood which makes an identical hole in each piece of wood that you are trying to join.

Into the hole a special piece of wood called a 'biscuit'. The biscuit is then glued into both pieces that you are trying to join.

You can make cuts at varying angles depending how versatile your cutter is.

Depending on how you adjust the fence you can also make cuts of varying depths.

Biscuits come in a variety of sizes and are usually pretty cheap to buy.

The kinds of joins that are made will normally be at 180 degrees or edge to edge as it is known. They are also used when joining at 90 degrees when making a small table or a drawer as an example.

There is also another type of plate joiner called a domino joiner and they are made by the company Festool.

Instead of a flat shaped biscuit that is placed into both slots they use a specially shaped biscuit that looks like a hybrid between the more traditional dowel and a regular biscuit.

The joins are significantly stronger, however they do take slightly longer to setup and make.

A Festool domino joiner is also considerably more expensive that a cheaper biscuit cutter.