I thought biscuit joints were a gimmick until Sam showed me his 40 year old shop stools
Sam runs a two man shop outside Missoula and he's been at it since 1979. I was helping him clean out a back room and he had these four oak shop stools he built back when he was an apprentice. All of them had biscuit joints at the stretchers, no mortise and tenon anywhere. I figured they'd be loose and wobbly by now. Nope. Rock solid. He sat on one and rocked back on two legs just to mess with me. He said he's re glued maybe one leg in 40 years and that was after a customer's kid tipped it off a truck. I've been cutting mortises by hand on every stool I build since I was 19 and now I'm second guessing all that time. Has anyone else run into a joint method that outlasted what you'd expect, or is Sam just lucky?