I too "prefer biscuits for the ease of use, but Dowels served the world for many many years. There was really no point to BiscuitJjoiners being invented, other than, I suspect, a way to capture a market that now must buy these compressed biscuits. The same with the Festool crap, where you pay 1200 bucks for yet another new tool and get bled further for their hardwood joiners..... you don't need any of it. It's all marketing. Oh you'll read the propaganda about dowels blowing ot the face grain with dowels, the biscuits "registering" the face grain over time, it's all lies. In near 50 years I've never had it happen. First of all, you don't fill the hole when using dowels. you lightly brush the sides and tip of a dowel and tap it in slowly. If you bought fluted dowels, you have no issue because the excess will squeeze out as you are tapping. With biscuits you take the time it takes to get your centering just right, then you can zip the slots out effortlessly where ever it makes sense, and you don't have to worry about accuracy like you do with dowels. The biscuits are forgiving to a point. I've been doing this nearly 50 years, so my eyes aren't what they once were so for me, biscuits are easier. A simple pencil stroke across the two boards is plentBut you don't need one. Dowels are simple, dowels can be mad in your shop simply and cheaply, dowels do the job. In a moment of weakness I bought the Festool, and returned it the same day. 1200.00!!! I must have had a stroke or something to ever walk out of that store with that box in my hand, I made two holes with it, tapped in two heavy oak blocks and thought, Am I an idiot? I took it back when my common sense finally prevailed. Young woodworkers, trust an old VET. You don't need this expense. My hundred dollar Porter Cable has produced hundreds to tables and mantles and gosh knows what else. I still use dowels too. I make my own. I pound them thru a round hole to make them from square maple , then star shaped hole (in a peice of 1/2 inch flat steel) to flute them. Free dowels from scrap cutoffs.
If you don't believe me about these tools adding nothing to your quality of work, , watch some U tube videos of chinese craftsmen making unbelievable things. The most rudimentary tools, sometimes not even power. The one high cost tool that seems common across the board is a big heavy powerful bandsaw, other than that it's mostly hand planers, circular saws etc. Bare feet, which they also use as tools. We've been brainwashed by Advertising and Marketing. A craftsman is good with his mind and with his hands. The tools are secondary to that. You don't need anyones hands in your pockets to releive your self doubts. You get better by failing, learning from that, thinking up a new way, and going at it again. If I see a guy come into a jobsite with Festool bags, and high end overkill tools, I know that he has no confidence and he charges too much.
