Thread: Best slot cutter: Makita plate joiner or a router with a slot cutter bit ?

I can't see a biscuit machine cutting 1m slots - they're designed for a plunge(?) cut which makes a half oval recess to take the appropriate sized biscuit
I think only a slot bit in a router will easily do what you are doing

but if you want to change your process you could look at the Festool domino system - it's a floating tenon system but not as I understand you do yours

A biscuit joiner is not what you want for your application. Cutting long slots is technically possible, but not practical and much more of a PITA than using a trimmer. Blades are a standard size, if you want a bigger slot you have to do multiple passes.

I use both. Hitachi router with slot cutting bit and a Makita biscuit machine.

As has been said above, you can cut slots with a biscuit machine but it is time consuming and not the best for accuracy. If I'm joining using a loose tongue I use the router, accurate, quick, easy to set up and repeat. I tend to use ply for the long tongues and have a few slot cutting bits of various thicknesses to accommodate different thicknesses of ply. The blade all use the one mandrel and only take a couple of minutes to change. I don't recall the cost of the cutters but they were not expensive and are easily sharpened as they have 4 TC teeth.

In the early days I made up a jig for the Hitachi which allowed me to make biscuit slots using the 4mm slot cutter but it was slow as the jig needed to be located and clamped for each slot.

The biscuit machine only gets used for biscuits and are only 4mm in thickness which means if I wish to use thicker timbers I need to double row the biscuits, not difficult but horses for courses.

Thanks for the feedback.
I have purchased a 710W Makita trimmer/router (1/4") for $195 and will continue to use my 6mm slot cutter router bit with my home made 6mm hardwood floating tenons. My existing jigs for cutting slots at 60mm, 80mm and 100mm width may need a slight modification but that is fine with me. It feels like a sturdy machine so I'm sure it will be an improvement over my old Ryobi trimmer.
(I still have my large Bosch router in my router table).
Cheers.

Triton sold (still sell?) a slot cutter set up for biscuits on a router table. Their biscuits are round rather than oval.

I built a version about 25 years ago. Still have it. The fence pivots and the edge then moves back into the slot cutter to form the slot for the biscuit ...



I have not used it in many years, but recall that it worked very well.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi,
I have the earlier Maikita biscuit joiner and I have tried cutting long slots with it. I had to remove the rubber grip face designed to stop it slipping sideways when doing the plunge cut for biscuit.
Then it was very difficult to stop it running away as I moved the machine face along the board - essentially what I was facing was the inverse of the nasty situation where table saws do kickback when cutting wood.
A router is a much better choice for cutting slots
Paul