Thread: Imperial sized dowels

Making dowels - the pencil sharpener method

That might help.

Lie Nielsen do an imperial dowel plate
Dowel Plate

or I have these
Veritas® Dowel and Tenon Cutters - Lee Valley Tools
which I find to be excellent. These have paid for themselves many times over.

Take a set of dial calipers or similar to Bunnings, and fossick through their dowells. Can't remeber which way around they are, but Bunnings call all their dowells say 6mm, but depending on species of timber and supplier, some are actually 1/4". I found this out when making wheels for toys, and found the mis-match after using a wheel cutter with a 6mm drill bit but the 6mm dowells wouldn't fit.

Also worth checking Masters, as they may source their dowell from USA, as per their Cherry and Red Oak timber.

Alan...

Have you tried Porta Mouldings

Lee Valley also brought out a hammer through dowel former which takes Imperial & Metric sizing inserts one-at-a-time. It is designed to fit to a bench top while the Lie Neilsen is a tradition multi-hole plate that you can just stick in your pocket (or their leather case).

Originally Posted by safari

I have recently been given a Silex no. 30 dowel jig with five imperial sized drill guides. I would like to give it a try but am having trouble finding a supplier of dowels. Can anyone offer any suggestion? I have seen a dowel plate in the Carbatec catalogue but it seems to only come in metric sizes.

Thanks in advance for any help for any help.

I had the same problem myself with a Stanley dowel jig which I used happily for many years before imperial dowels were phased out for metric ones. It just does not work to the same degree of accuracy with metric dowels in Imperial guides, close, but not close enough. I solved the problem for a while by importing imperial dowels from overseas, mainly US, but recent cost of postage has made that an expensive exercise, hardly worth the effort. Lately, I bought a Supercraft dowelling jig on clearance special at a local hardware store. The jig itself presents problems in some circumstances of use, but it came with sets of both metric and imperial drill guides. I use the metric guides in the Stanley, there are some difficulties because of the outside diameter of the guides but you can overcome these with a little ingenuity and accuracy is achievable again.
I understand that the Silex was a knock-off of the Stanley, so the same solution should work for you, using metric dowels.

Thanks to everyone for the replies. A lot of good ideas to follow up on.

Originally Posted by Uncle Al

Take a set of dial calipers or similar to Bunnings, and fossick through their dowells. Can't remeber which way around they are, but Bunnings call all their dowells say 6mm, but depending on species of timber and supplier, some are actually 1/4". I found this out when making wheels for toys, and found the mis-match after using a wheel cutter with a 6mm drill bit but the 6mm dowells wouldn't fit.

Also worth checking Masters, as they may source their dowell from USA, as per their Cherry and Red Oak timber.

Alan...

Same goes for Mitre10. In fact, all the dowel labelled 6mm is actually 1/4" in our local store.

Originally Posted by Uncle Al

Take a set of dial calipers or similar to Bunnings, and fossick through their dowells. Can't remeber which way around they are, but Bunnings call all their dowells say 6mm, but depending on species of timber and supplier, some are actually 1/4". I found this out when making wheels for toys, and found the mis-match after using a wheel cutter with a 6mm drill bit but the 6mm dowells wouldn't fit.

Alan...

Good Morning Safari

Like Alan and Hermit I got caught by BigChains labelling on dowell sizes.

All dowell was labelled in metric sizes, but pine was metric and hardwood were imperial sizes - or vice versa - cannot remember.

Dishonest or incompetent product specifications is a real PIA.




Fair Winds

Graeme

Drill the imperial sized holes through a piece of steel and drive the dowels through. Those from Bunnings et al will be oval anyway, so you need to round them.,