A couple of comments on the instructions in the OP.
- I followed the instructions pretty much exactly, and they worked well for Pecan sawdust/chips from Butcher-Packer. One batch of 4 cups of sawdust/chips yielded 21 biscuits. Next up will be a batch of hickory with sawdust/chips from The Sausage Factory. If anyone has a line on a good source of sawdust/chips of either apple or alder, I'd appreciate it! Maple would be nice too, but less critical.
- Each biscuit was an even 1/4 cup measure of the moist mixture, very lightly tamped into the 1/4 measure with the back of the spoon used to scoop them out.
- Pre-heating the bowl that the sawdust/chips are moistened in helps. Just filling it with hot tap water before starting makes the timing less critical.
- Along those lines, using boiling (212F) water is critical. I tried a batch with water that was probably only 200F and it was not a huge success.
- A chopstick makes a decent pusher. Especially a metal one, but really, any will do.
- Periodically wiping the inside of the larger hole saw dry and spraying with a food-safe silicone spray (try The Sausage Factory -- that's where I get mine) helps substantially in getting the biscuits to release from the press.
On the subject of YouTube videos -- there are some out there, and they're worth a watch, but ultimately I found the instructions here by
Tickle The Ivories to be superior if you're starting from scratch.
DO get the press disks from
http://www.ebay.com/usr/lumberjack1983 -- I emailed him, got a price, and bought them direct. They make the job
much easier. And they're cheap. The OP lists them as $8.95, and I don't remember what I paid but it wasn't substantially different than that.
An alternate source for an inexpensive woodworker's vice that appears to be essentially identical to the one the OP describes is Amazon:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001LQY4E. Price was $20 with free shipping. It's blue instead of red.

I've already made a batch of bacon with the test batch of biscuits, and had no problems even though they were a bit 'rougher' than this batch. IME, it takes a couple of 1/2 batches to get it down to a repeatable process where you know what works for you, and to where you will have consistently sized buiscuits that hold together properly without being friable or over-hard. This batch will be used to smoke Andouille.