I am not much of a baker--I can follow a recipe just fine but don't get into all the precise details of good baking technique, and I'm not likely to fabricate my own recipes for baked goods. However! I can type up a link with the best of them, so I'm going to send you over to the Homesick Texan's biscuit post. This was linked at Shelterrific last week, and as soon as I read the recipe I knew I had to try it. 
The Brit and I are both off work this morning--he has to fly off to Vegas for biz this afternoon, and I don't teach until later in the day, so today was the day. This recipe is not at all intimidating, and took about a half hour, start to finish. And I didn't even have a rolling pin, so I just used a clean wine bottle out of recycling, and cut the biscuits out with my measuring cup. I mixed in a little whole wheat flour and baked them up in my wonky oven. The biscuits did not suffer one bit.
The result: buttery, flaky, tender biscuits, almost too rich. We ate them up with strawberry jam.
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ok, so i tried this. the main thing i did wrong was work the butter into the flour with my hands too much. basically, too much touch. the other thing i wondered about was she talks about "beating" the dough once it's all incorporated, to pump some air into it. did you do that?
So were they tough, or what? I actually didn't really beat the dough. Considering I rolled it out with a wine bottle, I thought it best not to risk whacking the counter with breakable glass. But the inexpert and unwieldy piling up and rolling out probably had some of the effect of beating.
My biscuits definitely could have been fluffier, but I thought they raised up really well and they definitely didn't taste overworked. Next time: actual rolling pin + actual beating and I shall report on the outcome.
they weren't tough, they were just too smooth, not really biscuit texture. the flavor was still good. i tried again this morning, and basically did it like i was ignoring them. mixed as little as possible, kneaded as little as possible. the texture was much better, but they didn't rise much. and the flavor seemed to be lacking. i don't know why your pictures on flickr have inspired this biscuit quest, but it's reaking havoc on my diet.
Re: diet, I know--I think my boyf ate half the batch in one sitting and I didn't have the heart to tell him he'd just eaten half a stick of butter.
Good luck on your biscuit quest. Were I a more experienced baker, I might be able to suggest what to do differently. Apparently I was just lucky they turned out on the first try.