Early in my carpentry career, I
pried off an old door casing and
found thin, football-shaped
splines inside the miters. The
house was built in the 1920s, but the
miters were still tight and flush. Years
went by before I saw anything like it
again. I was on a kitchen remodel job
where the cabinetmaker used similar
splines, which he called biscuits, to siteassemble
an oversize pantry unit. He
put glue and biscuits into a series of
slots in the cabinet parts, and had the
whole thing clamped together in no
time. I asked the cabinetmaker what he
used to make the slots, and he showed
me a tool that looked like an angle
grinder attached to