teak bungs /plugs

[stevesailing]

Hi,

I'm repairing an internal cabinet in my boat and need some teak bungs/plugs to fit into 3/8" countersunk screw holes. anyone know of a supplier in Australia?

regards,

Steve

[Cool Runnings]

Short of using a plug cutter and making your own, Caporns in Sydney would probably have these.
Have you tried the Wooden Boatshop in Sorrento?

Either way,will cost you though.

[PAR]

Welcome to the forum Steve.

I haven't bought bungs in a long time, but I can see why you might if only needing a few. Can you get the appropriately sized dowel, in the species you want? If not and also not wanting to buy a good plug cutter (cheap ones don't work worth a damn), you can drill a bung size hole in some 1/4" (6 mm) plate steel. Cut a square dowel, slightly bigger than the hole in the plate and drive short sections of this through the hole with a 5 pound hammer. This will produce accurately sized short (6" or 150 mm or less) dowels, that can be cut to size as needed. The advantage is you just need a hunk of steel, a vice and a hammer. I wouldn't want to make a thousand 3/8" bungs like this, but a few dozen is easy enough for the cost of a hole in some plate, that can be used repeatedly. I have a length of 3" angle stock I've drilled several different size holes in. Over time, I've sharpened the hole edges with a die grinder, to make better cuts, but it works fine without on a few dowels.

[Mike Field]

Clearly I'm a bit late getting to this but, even on internal joinery I wouldn't advocate using dowels. Not only will the end grain not match th surface grain of the piece you're finishing, it will be the wrong colour.

Anywhere on a boat where it's likely to get wet a dowel can also tend to wick water into the timber, inducing rot. My sundial is supported on the top of a 45'-footer's mast that broke because someone, sometime, plugged a hole in the mast with a dowel.

PAR's system is great for making straight-grained trenails though.

I think I have a few lathes left of burma teak. And I have some plug cutters. PM me if you're still looking.

Mike

[PAR]

Agreed you can have issues with dowels, used to hold things, but the OP's needs will be using them for bungs, which are simply slivers of a dowel, over a metal fastener. Again, I usually make my own, often from off cuts from the planking or frames or whatever I'm fixing, so the species are the same. Any moisture mitigating through a dowel, used as a bung, with stop at the fastener, which in itself can cause issues, but no more than a plug cut bung. I do use dowels to align things, particularly complex assemblies that need to be epoxied, because of the slippery nature of goo. These would be small locating pins really, which are often entombed in goo after the assembly is together.

A good example of this was a stem I made recently, where it was too long and wide to get from one piece. I made it up of 4 pieces of oak, all cut from the same board, shaped and clamped to the layout table, where I drill six 1/8" (3mm) holes for pins, to insure the alignment was maintained as it currently was on the table. I slightly countersunk the top of the locating pin holes on the outboard side, then buttered everything up, including the dowels and holes. Assembly was insured, because the pins forced the fitment. I cut the dowels shy of the surface (countersunk thing) and hit these with a filler later in the build process, when I had other holes and divots to fill.

For a bung, I'd do similar, though no countersink, but I would put a drop or two of adhesive in the bottom of the bung hole, on top of the faster, so there's a good moisture break, between it and the fastener head.

[Mike Field]

Ah well, we can disagree on the use of a dowel as a surface-finisher over a fastener -- it's not something I'd do, for the reasons given. But I certainly agree about using timber from the same piece for cutting plugs -- I wouldn't think of doing anything else. And we also agree on the use of dowels for aligning parts of a whole for assembly. (People also use those 'biscuits' for this task too, but I confess I have no experience with them.)

Mike

[PAR]

Biscuits only work with water based adhesives, which is required to make them swell up in the slot. I've used biscuits on cabinetry with PVA's, but not much else. We don't disagree about using a dowel as a finishing element, the grain orientation is wrong, so the color and texture will be wrong too, but 95% of the folks looking at it wouldn't know the difference anyway. Maybe I should define my "dowels" as home made, being driven through the appropriately sized hole, not the typical store boat stuff, which are just about extruded through a die, grain long.