Thread: Where to buy Dowels

gday i make my own from dowelling rod bought in bunnies sold in various thicknesses and lenghts

The big hardware stores, carbatec and other woodworking places. They are not hard to find.

If I want small quantities the Haron brand dowels are available at most hardware stores ... Bunnings, Mitre10, etc.

You can buy larger quantities (ie, 1,000) at Elraco and Timbecon, and I'm sure other places have them also.

I like to use fluted dowels. I don't trust the dowel plate stuff, but I admit that is prejudice rather than experience.

BUT MORE IMPORTANT: PLEASE POST YOUR THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCE ON THE JOINT GENIE.

I saw buckets of Triton dowels and biscuits at Bunnings today

Kev.

If you are wanting to purchase large quantities then Furnware is my first choice for good quality dowels.
http://www.dctsupplies.com.au/GoToCat.html

Then there is Hafele. (Need to register to view catalogue)
http://www.hafele.com/au/index.htm

Then there is Cornall.
http://www.artia.com.au/resources/Cornall_Sect38.pdf

Mike.

It's a good reason to buy a lathe!
Rive, some scrap timber, turn to 7mm.
Make a bash plate.. (find a thick hunk of steel, and drill a 6mm hole and bash the newly turned dowel through it.

repeat

Given that a piece of furniture will use 100 or more dowels, I don't think "make your own" is good advice.

I speculate that poorly-made dowels are like any poorly-made tenon - unless the sides are parallel for the entire length, the joint won't maximise its glue contact.

Paying a lot for a dowelling jig is mainly to assure square and accurate dowel holes. You'd want to think carefully before wasting that effort with sub-standard dowels.

Of course, if you wanted to use THROUGH-dowels as a feature, making your own is probably the only solution.

Tight fitting unfluted dowels remove too much of the glue from the mating surfaces when knocked in, giving you a weaker joint. It would be quite difficult and time consuming to make your own accurate fluted dowels.

Mike

Shutterbug, whilst that is my opinion also, do you have any evidence?

I'm curious about any tests, etc., which demonstrate the right amount of glue for a joint.

Hi Ron. I don't have any specific evidence I can steer you towards. My experience comes from my many years using different doweling systems. I'm sure someone, somewhere will have done a difinitive study on the efficacy of different doweling procedures.
Might be a good subject to Google.

Mike

I thought the fluting was to let the glue out and prevent hydraulic pressure buildup that will push the dowel back out of the hole.

I do not want to hijack this thread but I think this fits in here as well .

While on dowels. I purchased a set of dowel centre points from Carbatec. The sizes were 6mm and 10 mm. There is an 8 mm listed also but they were out of stock of that size.

My question is and i have been meaning g to ask this for a while. Bunnings have 6mm and 8 mm dowel but no 10mm. They have 9.6mm instead.

Why would that be. I have not used them yet, but in practice the 6mm is a nice fit but the 9.6 is very sloppy. This is without glue.

Are they 9.6 mm to give you a bit of fudge room when putting two or three together to make a joint or do you need 10 mm dowels,

If I do need 10 mm or just slightly less, I might have to make a metal jig and bash an oversize dowel through it. The question of how much play to allow the glue to set and not be forced out needs some thinking about also.

Any other suggestions.

9.6mm is 3/8 of an inch. That might answer your question

Yes, the flutes are to allow glue to escape rather than building up in the bottom of the hole, preventing the dowel from going all the way in causing problems during glue up.

I think what Shutterbug is suggesting is that if the dowel is very tight in the hole, then it will scrape the glue away from the sides of the mortice, leaving a dry joint. The same can be said for any joint if it is too tight.

So if you have flutes on the dowel, it will at least leave some glue in the joint. The books I have here on joinery recommend grooving dowels with a saw kerf or two if they aren't fluted. Another book recommends using a dowel or 'pop' plate to size dowels. To make a pop plate, you just drill a hole of the appropriate size in a piece of steel and then tap the dowels through.

I presume the Dowelmax, which I gather makes very tight-fitting dowel joints, relies on the grooves to ensure the joint has glue in it. Rod?

One of my books here talks about making dowels for decorative purposes (using a plate) but having tried it, I'd hate to try and make any quantity. They're very difficult to get uniform and straight.

Silent C. I had thought about that and had put my vernier gauge ofer the 9.6 mm in case that was an imperial size. But if that size is imperial why do Bunnings sell 6, & 8 mm in metric and then switch to imperial.

Unless it is Bunnings idea of a joke and we, their customers would not know any better, because if we did, we would not shop there.