by Sawyer » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:12 pm
One other thing to think about before you return anything...
As a finish carpenter, I do a bit of cabinet building. Both of these joinery methods have their place. If you plan on building your face frames and then just butt-joint nailing them to your cabinet carcass, pocket screws work very well. They are simple, strong, and fast. In fact, my entire teardrop is held together by titebond III and pocket screws. However, on most of my cabinetry, I like to dado and groove all my face frames before I attach them to the cabinet carcass, this allows for better alignment, much stronger glue joint, it's more attractive (at least I think), and results in a better all around cabinet. Now if you ran your pocket-screwed face frame through your expensive dado blade, you'd be in a world of hurt, and this is where biscuits (or even better, mortise & tenon) come in handy. You can cut a dado right through the joint because it's just wood and glue.
Now I doubt most people would build their teardrop cabinetry this way, as it can be considered overkill for such a small project, but if you plan on doing more intensive cabinetry projects down the road, I'd consider keeping both... I have both, and use both often, sometimes in the same project.
The other thing to think about with your biscuit joiner situation, is to see which one (if either of them even do) will cut F.F. (face frame) size biscuit slots. F.F. biscuits are the smallest and require a blade change on the joiner, but will allow you to join much smaller stock together. The porter cable biscuit jointer his this feature, but my dewalt doesn't. Something to think about anyway...
My vote is to keep both, If you try both and realize the strong points they each have, you'll be happy you did...
"Those who would give up a little freedom to get a little security shall soon have neither" - Benjamin Franklin