I am planning on making hive bodies and Nucs. The local home store always has a good supply of 1X4s and 1X6s and even 1X8s in their cull lumber bin for .51 each. Does anyone have experience on using a biscuit joiner and gorilla to make the planks usable size. I was planning in off-setting where the smaller lumber meets so the box joints will help lock them together.
Has anyone tried or have luck with using this method?
I use a lot of rough cut lumber which gives me plenty of off demension pieces. Although I have never used biscuit joints on Langstroth hive bodies, I have used them for TBHs.
I have however used finger joints to "make up" lumber for hive bodies and it works very well. The finger joints give much more glue surface and locks better than biscuits. The biscuits seem to work ok on the TBHs, but then again the TBHs aren't lugged around and abused like Langstroth stuff.
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I use these for tabletop construction and it is a very strong construcion method. Put your biscuits closer together than usual, and with gorilla glue it will be very stable and strong.
You don't need either one for edge to edge gluing. Gluing long grain to long grain results in a joint stronger than the wood on either side. Glue one up and break it along the joint. It will tear wood from both sides. The glue joint will remain intact.