Thread: Dowel Maker 10/12/14mm

Why not just use a dowel Plate

Originally Posted by China

Why not just use a dowel Plate

For ease of use it is chalk and cheese between the two. You have to rough size a blank first for both, but much less effort required to drive a blank through the cutter block with a drill compared to hammering a blank through a dowel plate. A dowel plate is limited with the practical length of stock you can hammer through, where the cutter block easily makes longer dowels. It must have taken all of about 20 seconds to run up a 600mm 14mm dowel from a piece of scrap. Also the cutter block is cheaper than a dowel plate, although it is limited to the 3 sizes. If I wanted 8mm dowels now I would probably rough out a 10mm blank on the cutter block and size it to 8mm using the dowel plate.

Looks quite capable and from your description very user friendly.

Would one be able to hand hold the unit?

I ask as some time ago I needed to make around 300 odd 260mm long dowels from a matched piece of supplied timber, I used my wood lathe to do this with an elaborate set-up. This unit could have been a possibility and I was thinking of placing the timber in the chuck jaws, then pulling the contraption to the end of the rotating timber.

Mick.

Originally Posted by Optimark

Would one be able to hand hold the unit?

It is large enough to hold but I think it would be quite awkward.

I guess you could use the screw holes to add a handle which might make it easier to keep oriented if trying to pull it along a lathe bed?

Interesting looking gadget, I might have to give one a try. I have a dowel plate, but it rarely gets used.

I'm in the middle of building a new bench, and decided to drawbore/peg the large mortises between frame components. Everything is so oversize that 1/2" dowels are easily accommodated. My solution was to put a hole in a piece of scrap using the forstner bit I used to drill the holes in the bench, take said "portable hole" with me to Bunnies, then rifle through their stock of 1/2" dowel until I found a length that was a good tight fit. There is a massive variatiion between pieces, I might add. Worked brilliantly - I did glue the mortises too, but quite honestly the dowels pulled the joints in so tight that they could probably have gone without.

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

My solution was to put a hole in a piece of scrap using the forstner bit I used to drill the holes in the bench, take said "portable hole" with me to Bunnies, then rifle through their stock of 1/2" dowel until I found a length that was a good tight fit. There is a massive variatiion between pieces, I might add.

That's an interesting point. I wonder how much variation there is between these dowel makers, and how closely 10/12/14mm dowels made with the maker will match the holes one drills with 10/12/14mm drills. From the picture, the cutter placement doesn't look adjustable, so if they don't match they don't match.

My dowels did come out slightly undersize, the 14mm dowel measured 13.9mm, but this might be a matter of technique as I rushed at it during the test run.

Hmm. I wonder if the aluminium block is deep enough to provide good registration. Are you able to skew the dowel blank as you run it through, and accidentally send it through at an angle rather than perfectly square? I think that could cause it to cut undersize even if it were capable of cutting on-size when set up square.

Maybe it's more accurate if you can chuck the dowel blank in a drill press and clamp the dowel maker to the table... though then you'd be limited in length by vertical range of your drill press.

The aluminum block and cutter placement is all well machined. I think there is more than adequate tolerance for woodworking. I remeasured the dowel I cut a couple of days ago and it is now spot on 14mm according to my calipers. A little bit of atmospheric moisture has probably done it's thing on the freshly planed surface?

With the stresses imparted to a draw bore peg joint or if just aligning dowel joints I think the swelling of a little applied glue will make any use in joinery fully functional. In reality matching these dowels to drilled holes of the same size will probably require a gutter to be cut along the length of the dowel first to let excess glue escape from the joint when pressing home.

I suspect with due care you might be able to turn out something approaching engineering tolerances if needed.