One of our viewers wanted to know what is the best way to glue boards together for a table top.
Well, there are lots of good ways to do that.
Most old furniture was simply glued, square edge to square edge.
If you want to increase the strength of that you could use dowels, and we showed a doweling jig as well as dowel centre points to line up the holes on two different boards.
Even better than dowels, because of being easier to line up and structurally stronger, is to use "biscuits". These are flat oval shaped wedges made of compressed wood. A special biscuit cutter cuts an oval slot into both boards to be joined. The slot is precisely the same distance from the top of each board, but has a bit of slop from side to side. When you glue the biscuits in, they swell a bit and make a very strong joint. Most modern cabinet making is done today with biscuits.
Doweling jigs are a bit hard to find because of the popularity of biscuit jointers. Specialty woodworking stores will have doweling jigs and dowel centres.
Biscuit jointers can be found at any renovation centre or tool store.