I am a weekend warrior DIYer who has started to get into building some tables and other furniture to help fill up the house & save some money along the way + not having to worry about our 2.5 & 7mo old kids messing them up is nice. I'm not using exotic hardwoods & I am not building this stuff with the intention of it lasting a lifetime.

I have used the kreg jig for all of my projects so far and it has worked great for me. Recently my FIL sent me a Dewalt joiner for my birthday and am trying to decide if it is something I will really need/use in addition or in place of the kreg jigs? I think the kreg jig will be more than enough for anything I plan to build now or in the near future and I am thinking I could swap this out for a router since I do not have one yet.

Thoughts on pocket holes vs biscuits?

Here are some pics of the stuff I have built:

Dining table & benches:

Guest room headboard:

Daughters first 'real' bed:

Sawhorse coffee table:

TV console table for upstairs gameroom (yes TV will be mounted & cords hidden)


Not including tools I have probably built everything above for approx $350-400 in materials.

Nice work, great job!

Pocket holes make everything much faster in assembly.

Traditional joinery is much, much more strong.

If there is an application that requires a bunch of stress, I would avoid pocket holes.

From the stuff that I've built, I use pockets hole for basic joints and biscuits for panel type stuff that would make pocket screws some what difficult.

Built this dust collector cart using all pocket screws and glue.


And built these wall/floor panels for my wife's photo studio using biscuits and glue only.



The biscuit panels are incridibly sturdy, but do take longer to put together than pockets screws.

Question for you, OP, how is that table holding up? I saw those plans on a DIY website and thought about building one similar, but after reading the reviews and digging into traditional table construction I decided against it for now. Just curious about your exerience.

All in all, very nice work!

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Nice work, great job!

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Thanks! Its a lot of fun for me. I had very little experiencing before but after looking at furniture prices I figured I would rather invest money in tools & pick up a new hobby along the way.

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Pocket holes make everything much faster in assembly.

Traditional joinery is much, much more strong.

If there is an application that requires a bunch of stress, I would avoid pocket holes.

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I fully believe it is much stronger & probably much better off for anything you hope to last a really long time but at the same time I have been pretty impressed with the strength of the pocket holes.

Wow no joke my wife asked me a couple weeks ago to build something nearly identical to that for her to take pictures with. Looks good! I definitely need to invest in a dust collection system as well one day.

Regarding the table, that was really my first project and the table legs/supports & benches are sturdy as hell & I have no issues with. The top is a little bit different.... Looking back I really didn't have a clue on how to properly glue up boards & had virtually zero clamps while doing it. I actually laugh at myself now thinking about it but for the most part it has held up fine and it is one of those things that nobody else really notices the imperfections but I definitely do. One day when I have a free weekend and nothing else to do I may rebuild a new top for it. Other than the little separation between the boards down the middle though it is pretty sturdy. I probably wouldn't stand on it myself and jump around the edges but my 2 yr old stands on it all the time.

I saw a few people have used 2x8s for the top. I used 2x8s for that sawhorse coffee table & just made sure to let them dry out as long as possible in my garage, then ripped the rounded edges off & made sure to glue them really well. I may do that for a new top for the dining table although it would be extremely heavy.

I am probably doing it wrong but everything I have done with biscuits has issues with wood expansion and contraction. I will have to take some pics of a dresser I built. I used biscuits for the top as I was joining a bunch of small strips of oak. It has big gaps in it now because of the contraction of the wood. If I were doing it again I would probably do tongue and groove on it for slab type stuff.

Nice looking work you did. Have you thought of mortise and tenon joints?

I built almost that exact same TV stand

I use biscuits for alignment only. Pocket hole is a quick and dirty. Nice for face frames or hiding where you can't see them. If you know how your joint is going to be stressed they can't be very strong though I'd done ckrrectly.

bq00, side grain glue ups should have no problem with expansion, that is the least amount of movement from seasonal humidity changes wood will see. My guess is you didn't have good adhesion contactor the wood was not fully cured. I've done hundreds of side grain glue ups and never had that issue. With proper glue application and clamping pressure, your glue bond will be more than strong enough, and your biscuits only really offer alignment help in the glue up process.

Agreed traditional mortise and tenon is the strongest, but also the most tedious.

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I use biscuits for alignment only. Pocket hole is a quick and dirty.

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Sounds like you went with the "neither" option. So, what do you use?

Here are some pictures of my dresser I built. I built it close to ten years ago now. It was hard to get any good pictures because it resides in my garage. It is too big for any of the rooms in the house and the top had gone bad by the time we moved into our place.







eta: Agrams you are most likely correct in the thought of the wood not being cured properly. I used old wood from my job at the time that was being thrown out. I wonder if I could take it apart now and clean it up and get better contact between the boards.

AgBQ-00, I suspect the cause of the problem is how you put the trim along the front. The perpendicular grain ortientation makes the inside boards fight the front and back trim boards, as there will be a larger expansion/contraction in the main body pieces and virtually no movement on the front/back trim. So what happens is the pieces on the main body move back and forth/shrink and swell, are held by the trim, and then eventually something has to give.

BCO07. I pretty much use mortise/tenon (fixed or floating) for my projects. For my more complicated pieces that have to deal with wood movement, I do breadboard ends with floating tenons and through dowels.

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I use biscuits for alignment only. Pocket hole is a quick and dirty.

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Sounds like you went with the "neither" option. So, what do you use?

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Biscuits are made for alignment purposes in glue-ups. If you're building a top of some sort, glue is really all you need assuming you are using cauls of some sort to keep everything aligned.

If you're looking for a pure alternative to pocket holes for other joints, something like the festool domino would be a better option. Edge gluing with biscuits isn't really a suitable joining method for most joints.

It may be time to learn some more traditional joining methods.

How can I avoid that tension while still having a trim piece around the edge? I am wanting to get back into wood working and am always looking to learn.

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How can I avoid that tension while still having a trim piece around the edge? I am wanting to get back into wood working and am always looking to learn.

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Why not just get rid of the trim pieces and go with a decorative router profile? I did something similar to my son's dresser I refinished. It had a typical panel top and I went around the whole thing with an ogee profile. Really made it look sharp.

However, I would think because of the orientation of the top boards, you may still have an issue with expansion contraction.

The top boards are really kind of short. The trim gives me my overhang in the front and sides. I have it flush with the back panel. I had to work with what I had and turning scrap into usable pieces called for shorter pieces.