Dowel Plates..... or?

**Eldanos of KDM** · 10th June 2010, 10:13 PM

I have seen similar questions when searching on the forums, but my situation is always special; at least, I think so

I was wondering how people make their dowels.

In the past I have used my lathe to make one or two dowels at a time if I needed them in a particular timber...
That was painful enough but now I have a job where I need a hell of a lot of 10mm (or imperial measurement) dowels made of Sydney bluegum, which I have been supplied with to complete the job (the customer is a mill-operator).

How would you go about making them? I made a dowel plate out of steel but I'm not so sure the steel will last the distance, and it was tearing out, even though I had my test piece only ever so slightly bigger than I needed it when I drove it through..
Should I buy a LN plate?
Or is there an easier/quicker way to produce them where wont tear out the grain as much.

Any advice would be much appreciated

**Denim** · 10th June 2010, 10:17 PM

Good question. I'll will be very interested to hear if there's an alternative.

**ian** · 10th June 2010, 11:40 PM

who much is "a hell of a lot"?

dowell plates are really about sizing a few dowells immediately before using them, they are not a production tool

the "best way" would be to use a shaper with a power feeder -- do you have one?
2nd best would be a shaper with manual feed
3rd best would be a table mounted router

cut the rounded sticks to length using a band saw -- the process will be so monotonous that you should look for a saw that will do little damage when you get careless

**derekcohen** · 11th June 2010, 03:28 AM

I use the LN dowel plate. Demonstrated in this article ..

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Furniture/Drawboring.html

There is an advantage in making dowels out of rived wood - stronger.

Regards from Perth

Derek

**Dan** · 11th June 2010, 03:39 AM

Rob Cosman has a neat way of doing it. I ended up using a bit of tool steel in mine to get more of a scraping cut. It's described here

**JohnnoM** · 11th June 2010, 04:56 PM

I don't use a lot of dowels but when I do I run them all through a LN dowel plate. I just buy off the shelf packet type dowels from the big green tool box, but the variation in thickness amazed me. Banging them through a dowel plate before ues makes them a lot safer to use. Some just slip through the plate & others really take a shaving to size them. Highly recomend using a good plate.

**Eldanos of KDM** · 11th June 2010, 05:00 PM

Cheers for the advice guys, Dan I had a look at your link and was so impressed. Thanks

So I made a slight variation and knocked these out in about 15minutes (after the initial buggerizing around with my cutter)
They are all perfectly consistent too. Easy as.
Thanks again. Would've been on it for ages otherwise. Like Ian said, I don't think dowel plates are really meant for production as much as for resizing.

**Dan** · 11th June 2010, 07:20 PM

Nice work

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