General Operation - Craftsman 900.277300 Operator's Manual

6. DUST EXTRACTION
There are two options provided for
collecting dust from your plate joiner as
described below.
A. Dust Adaptor (See Figure 10)
This attachment, when inserted as
described above, allows the use of
several common sizes of vacuum
hose to be attached for direct
vacuum pick-up of the dust.
FIG 10
Vacuum hose connection
B. Dust Bag (See Figure 11)
The dust bag provided fits snugly
over the dust adaptor described
above. To empty the bag, open the
zipper underneath and dump
dust out.
NOTE: When the bag becomes full, the
dust will back-up into the adaptor and the
exhaust port on the right rear of the tool.
To clean out, turn off and unplug the tool
and remove packed dust. The bag will
hold the dust generated from
approximately 70 to 100 #20 biscuit cuts
before filling up.
FIG 11
GENERALOPERATION
Plate joiners are primarily used for making
cabinetry and furniture, joining millwork or
other similar applications where a strong,
accurate joint is required in wood or
wood by-products. There are literally
hundreds of variations of joints that can
be made with your Plate Joiner. We will
limit our discussion to six basic joints (see
application section) that can be used to
build on and adapt to your own applications.
The following are some basic set-up steps
that will apply to all biscuit joints.
1. BISCUIT SIZE SELECTION
As mentioned earlier, the three biscuit
sizes are #0, #10 and #20. Itis a good
rule of thumb to use the largest biscuit
size that will physically fit in the
application. Unless you are joining narrow
face or picture frames or using 1/2" or
thinner stock, you will find the #20 biscuit
size to suit most applications. After
selecting the biscuit size, set the depth
adjustment knob to the corresponding size
(see Controls section). Also, be sure the
fine depth adjustment is correctly set by
first testing in a scrap piece. This is
extremely important as you do not want to
discover during glue-up that your biscuit
slots are not quite deep enough.
2. BISCUIT LOCATION AND LAYOUT
Generally, biscuits may be spaced and
located at your discretion. For edge joints,
a good rule of thumb is to space biscuits
every 6-10-inches on center. It is further
recommended that biscuits be placed so
that the centerline of the end biscuits is
2-3 inches from the end of the workpiece.
When joining face frames or picture
frames where the workpiece is narrow, you
may have to choose the smaller biscuit
sizes to keep from "breaking out" on the
end of the joint. Breaking out should be
avoided if possible, but if not you can
assemble the joint and trim off the
exposed biscuit tip after the glue sets (see
Figure 12). When working with material up
to 1" thick, we advise to use a single
biscuit located in the approximate center
of the material thickness. If thicker stock is
to be joined, you may choose to use 2
biscuits across the thickness for greater
strength (see Figure 13). Biscuit locations
should be marked by first positioning the
mating pieces exactly as they are to be
assembled. Next, make a mark at 90 ° to
the joint interface across both pieces at
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