Thread: Fixing timber blades to dowel

Originally Posted by Chief Tiff

My method would be to get a forstner bit of the same diameter as the dowel and cut a 5mm deep counterbore on each face of the boards, then cut the dowels into 40mm thick slices. With 5mm at each end now buried in the “blades” you get the 30mm spacing you’re after. A simple jig on a drill press can be knocked up in a few minutes to accurately locate the counterbores.

If the fit is fairly tight then glue alone will probably be enough but you also have the option of drilling a hole down the centre of everything and clamping it all up with a length of threaded bar.

Thanks Chief, I'll have to drill this around 240 times though so I'm leaning towards just using 30mm spacers, no glue, and a threaded rod. This way I can stack the boards up and just drill the (~10mm?) hole for the threaded rod through many of them at once. Your method would no doubt be stronger though!