In article , "Charlie M. 1958" wrote:

I recently bought the Dewalt and am extremely pleased with it. But now
you have me curious about something... Can you or someone explain what
you mean about the PC doing face frame biscuits while the Dewalt cannot?

Porter-Cable markets a "face frame" (FF) biscuit that's about 5/8" shorter
than a standard #0 biscuit, and slightly narrower as well.

The PC 557 has four depth stops (20, 10, 0, and FF), and also comes with an
extra blade for cutting FF slots. This blade is about an inch smaller in
diameter than the standard biscuit blade. If you don't have that blade *and*
the proper depth stop, you won't be able to cut a slot that FF biscuits will
fit correctly.

That's not to say you can't use your DeWalt biscuit machine for making face
frames -- you can (with limitations) -- just that AFAIK you can't use it to
make slots for the Porter-Cable FF biscuits.

AFAIK, the smallest biscuit slot you can make with the DW machine is for a #0
biscuit. The biscuit is about 1-13/16" long, which means a slot about 2" long.
Obviously that's not going to work to make biscuit joints in 1-1/2" wide rails
and stiles, and may not work for 2" stock. If you don't mind building your
face frames with stock that's between 2" and 2-1/4" wide, #0 biscuits will
work fine. But if you want to use narrower material, that means some alternate
form of joinery. Those alternate forms could include:
- dowels
- pocket screws
- mortise and tenon
- lap joints
- PC 557 and a pile of FF biscuits :-)

--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.