Thread: Dowel Jointing - Chamfering dowels - The cheap, quick, easy way

The dowels I use come already chamfered

Originally Posted by China

The dowels I use come already chamfered

Excellent point thank you for that. I am in favour of commercially available dowels too.

However

1. There are some projects where the appropriate dowel is not commercially available.

2. There are times when the number of dowels I thought I had and the number of dowels I actually had did not coincide. The choice then becomes a 40 - 45 minute round trip or quickly bashing out 1 or 2 to finish the project.

I usually buy commercial smaller dowels and have used a sharpener as well but dowels larger than ~8mm are too large to fit into a pencil sharpener. For those I use a fixed belt sander. If I want to get fancy I stick them into a cordless drill and apply the other end to the belt sander.

You can buy sharpeners for carpenter's pencils that will handle >8mm.

Personally, I use a bowyers' chamfer. Which is basically just another pencil sharpener but with two different angles, for socketing timber arrow shafts into nocks and cast heads.

The reason I use it is because I have it. 'Tis part of my fletching kit. I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone to go out and buy one... although it will handle a larger range of diameters than a pencil sharpener and - the reason I like it for dowels - cuts a shallower chamfer.

Think I still have one from my archery days. It can have a new career.
Regards
John