Thread: How to make dowels?

Mine works well for me (of course, then Pops turned up with a bag full of Jarrah dowels as a gift!).

Regards from Perth

Derek

In the '60's I was an apprentice car and wagon builder with the New South Wales Government Railways. At times we had to make our own dowels and the method used was the same as the Lie Neilson gadget. We would just get a piece of steel about 1/4" thick and drill a hole in it the size of the dowel required. Then take a piece of timber and roughly plane it down to just oversize of the finished dowel size. Then just flog it into the steel plate and out comes the dowel. This is good for say 10mm or 12mm dowels to about 300mm long. A bit longer for larger dia. or shorter for smaller dia.

Hope this helps.


Billy

Spielman has a jig in his router book that uses a cove bit in the router

http://www.google.com.au/books?q=dowel+making+Jigs

Only dowels i use are tapered pins for locking joints etc and I turn them on the lathe.

Ross

Gentleman, thank you for your replies.
Is there any need for drawbore pins http://www.lie-nielsen.com.au/catalog.php?sku=1-DBP ? I feel that there use may be limited in particular where one does not want to totally drill through the workpiece, to accomodate an unnecessary thin tapered end.
Zelk