Thread: easy qn about dowel joints

Hi Steph,

Use dowels about 1/3 of the thickness of the boards you're joining - so they'd be about 6mm for a 19mm thick board.

To get them accurate,

firstly, ensure that the boards are flat and free from wind, as well as;
secondly, accurately mark out the dowel location with a marking gauge, square and sharp pencil;
thirdly, centrepunch the hole locations to allow the drill to start accurately

A dowelling jig and a sharp drill would also help.

Cheers,

eddie

Thanks for the reply.

I have a borrowed dowelling jig with specific drill bit that has a fine point. Therefore do I really need to pre-mark and punch the exact hole locations or just make sure that the line I draw to align the jig is exactly 90-deg across the boards?

How far apart should the dowels be?

Does it matter too much if I use 8mm dowels (since I already have a bag of them)?

If you're aligning the edges, Steph, I'd put them about 10"-12" apart or so.

the 8mm's fine - the 6mm is a guide. I wouldn't be using 12mm dowels.

If the jig's accurate, don't centrepunch. However, fi the jig bushing's worn, then it wouldn't hurt.

Good luck,

eddie

And use a decent glue.........

And have a look at Derek Cohen's first post in this thread - he gives the best explanation on how to use a dowling jig I have seen.

Cool! The one I've been lent is a Silex so very similar to the one in Derek's post .

I did a practice joint in some spare timber today and considering I am very short on clamping and stable work surfaces to hold the work it came up pretty well!

Probably won't get to gluing up until evening class on Tuesday but I have five panels to do (three boards each) and I want to be ready to go...

Steph