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Thread: Doweling Jig Recommendations Please

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kent A Bathurst View Post
    I actually have a question.....when and why would one use dowels? They did not improve the quality or alignment of joinery over M+T. In fact, my M+T was better. Maybe it was nothing more than an improving skill level on my part, which most certainly had a lot of headroom on the learning curve...and still does.
    I used dowels and the Dowl-it to build this step ladder for my wife. Just thought it would be a nice way to make it. Nice and easy. I also use M&T.

    0712091844.jpg
    Never, under any circumstances, consume a laxative and sleeping pill, on the same night

  2. #17
    I have the Dowelmax and love it. Very precision piece of equipment. I was very impressed with this company's customer service. I had lots of questions about the Dowelmax before I bought it, and the owner was very helpful.

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Aug 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Henderson View Post
    I agree with Kent (above). For strength, I'd much prefer mortise and tenon. You'd have to put in a lot of dowels to get the equivalent long-grain-to-long-grain surface area as you get with a mortise. You may not even have room in the joint area for that many dowels.

    For alignment during panel glue-up, I'd use cauls. The only thing I've ever used dowels for (in furniture) is the alignment pins for the leaves of an expanding dining table.

    Mike
    Assuming the same length, 3, 3/8" dowels gives you aproximately the same glueing surface as a 1.5" x 3/8" tenon.
    Pretty good, I think.

    Tim

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
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    I built this phone charging station / organizer using almost nothing except dowels, using the Jessem jig. Mortise and tenon didn't really seem appropriate here. I thought about using rabbets, but didn't think it would look right. I also thought about using stopped dados with what would have essentially been stub tenons, but dowels seemed much easier, especially when using the jig.

    The panel in front of the phones flips down using a Soss invisible hinge, and I drilled the holes for that using the jig as well. The only other parts that weren't done with dowels are the phone tray itself (which flips up), as that uses a 1/8" rod for a hinge, and the joinery between the drawer fronts and sides, as that uses a pinned sliding rabbeted dovetail.

    cell.jpg

    I also built some small knockdown shelves for holiday dolls for my mother-in-law using dowels and the Jessem jig. That's incomplete though since it's not due until the fall, and needs to be painted an appropriate holiday color.

    I've done M&T for other work. The learning tower I built for my son is M&T, but I did consider using dowels instead. I went with M&T because I haven't done a lot of them so I wanted the practice, and because I was honestly worried about racking. But the work I've done with dowels so far doesn't have any racking concern at all, so going with dowels on those shouldn't be a problem at all.

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Huber View Post
    For me the dowel are much faster and much easier and after the joint is done no one will know what is in there anyway. It could be dowels or it could be a M&T.

    As to the alignment with the DowelMax and the Jessem setting dowel for a joint will be spot on, that is the really nice thing about those tools.

    I agree there is more glue surface with a M&T but at this point the things I am building really don't need more strength then a good dowel joint provides.
    In support of Bill's position; good enough, satisfactory, sufficient, acceptable, suitable, reasonable, agreeable, adequate, all right- these words do not necessarily mean compromise in any construction, just a point at which nothing further of substance will be gained by additional effort.

    - Beachside Hank

  6. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Tim Janssen View Post
    Assuming the same length, 3, 3/8" dowels gives you aproximately the same glueing surface as a 1.5" x 3/8" tenon.
    Pretty good, I think.

    Tim
    Well, let's do a little math and see how it comes out. First, let's compute the long grain to long grain surface area of three 3/8" dowels, and assume they protrude into the material by 1.5" (on both sides). First, I'll compute the surface area of three 3/8" dowels, each 1.5". The surface area of a cylinder is given by the equation 2*PI*h*r (this excludes the area of the ends), where h= length of the dowel protruding into the wood, and r= the radius of the dowel (3/16" in this example). Each side of the joint (3 dowels in this example), therefore, will have a surface area of about 5.3 sq inch.

    But that's not the long grain to long grain surface area. Some of the dowel will be facing end grain and will not be a strong joint. The amount of long grain to long grain changes as you move around the dowel, but on average, the long grain to long grain surface area will be half of the total area of the dowel. So the effective gluing surface (long grain to long grain) of three 3/8" dowels, 1.5" into the wood, is about 2.6 sq inches. [See note below]

    Now, let's examine the tenon. The first question is how wide can you make the tenon? Three 3/8" dowels will take 1 1/8" (3 times 3/8") and there needs to be some space between them. Let's assume there's 1/8" between the dowels. That's about 1 3/8" total width. The area of one face of the tenon will be the width (1 3/8") times the depth (1.5"), or about 2 sq inches.

    But the tenon has two faces and both are long grain to long grain so the total effective gluing surface of the tenon is 4.125 sq inches.

    So the tenon has about 55% more long grain to long grain surface area than the dowels. And, of course, that's why dowel joints come apart long before mortise and tenon joints.

    I think I did all that math correctly, but please check my calculations and let me know if you find any errors.

    Mike

    [To help visualize why only half of the dowel is long grain to long grain, visualize the dowel as being square, but with the same total surface area as the cylinder dowel. Two sides will face end grain and two sides will face long grain. So the long grain to long grain surface area is half the total area.]
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 04-01-2012 at 12:52 PM. Reason: Corrected math error
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  7. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by frank shic View Post
    what do you suspect the furniture manufacturers use? they could probably get away with dowels since all the corners are usually braced anyways.
    I've repaired a lot of chairs that used dowels in the joint between the back and the seat. Usually, the only thing holding the chair together was the corner block. But the chair was more like a rocking chair than a dining room chair - but it was not supposed to rock.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  8. #23
    Join Date
    May 2005
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    walnut creek, california
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    lol an unintentional "feature"

  9. #24
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
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    Atlanta, GA
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    One underlying issue I had - that's me, not necessarily anyone else - with dowels was the same I had with biscuits from has-been-sold plate joiner: joint alignment.

    I freely admit that I used dowels and biscuits when I was just getting started, because they simply "seemed" to be the easy and straightforward method, but joint alignment was only one of a never-ending list of problems I dealt with when I "knew-less-than-nothing".

    I found - again, maybe due to movement on the learning curve all the way up to "knows slightly more than nothing" - that my alignment with M+T was better than the others. Of course, I have a very nice mortiser to help, and a tenoning jig for the TS. But....funny how these things progress.....I only break out the tenoning jig these days when I have a qty of repeating tenons. Any more, usually, I use the TS for the shoulders, and the BS for the slightly-oversize cheeks, and tune 'em up with a block plane or shoulder plane, or - today's fave - face float.

    Also - never say never, because I just finished a workbench for a non-WW neighbor/client. He rebuilds/restores motorcycles, and this will be his engine bench. It has 3 drawers across the top of the case, and 3 sliding "trays" across the bottom - to hold in-process engines. The drawers and the trays were made with 1/2" and 3/4" ply, sides butt-joined and bottoms just slipped inside, and everything put together with.....dowels. No doweling jig, mind you, but still - about 150 1/4" x 2" fluted dowels. I have no doubt that his small-displacement Italian Parilla engines [his current "kick"] are quite safe with that construction.

    It's like every other technique in our game - if it is working for you, then by definition it is the right approach.
    When I started woodworking, I didn't know squat. I have progressed in 30 years - now I do know squat.

  10. #25
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    NE Ohio
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    6,983
    I actually have a question.....when and why would one use dowels?
    I use them whenever I have to edge join two pieces of 3/4" plywood.
    Odd reason/odd use, I admit, but, dowels work better than anything else.

    I've salvaged a good bit of otherwise waste pieces that work fine for shop jigs and fixtures & shelves and such for shop cabinets.

    W/the way plywood is layered, glue alone isn't strong enough & biscuits are too hit or miss @ hitting alayer of wood instead of glue.
    The round dowels hit a few layers of wood - just enough to give a decently strong bond.

    I'm sure there's other more legitimate uses - but - I've salvaged enough scraps that my little $12.00 Rockler jig has paid for itself many times over.

  11. #26
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    San Antonio Texas
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    223
    I did a lot of research and went with the Jessem last year. it was a razor thin margin for jessem and the features/factors were personal preference...NOT any quality issues. both are great dowel jigs that are incredibly well made and from what I have read and seen, both are fully capable of enabling the user to do precise, repeatable joinery with ease.

    why jessem over dowelmax?

    2 main reasons.

    price:
    jessem was about $75 less expensive.


    system for width changes:
    the jessem expands without additional pieces, the dowelmax uses extra shim pieces for expanding the width. I tend to lose stuff like that...so I wanted the jig to be just one piece of kit.

    one area that i believe dowelmax is slightly better than jessem is the method to move the jig over with the extender...the jessem uses 2 threaded rods and a joining block whereas the dowelmax uses just one rod. the dowelmax system of just one extension rod looks less complex, faster and easier to use.

    just my 2 cents. i've used the jessem multiple times and i wouldn't want to dowel without it.

  12. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Craig Behnke View Post

    one area that i believe dowelmax is slightly better than jessem is the method to move the jig over with the extender...the jessem uses 2 threaded rods and a joining block whereas the dowelmax uses just one rod. the dowelmax system of just one extension rod looks less complex, faster and easier to use.
    I agree with you on the this, what I have found is I don't screw the rods into the the base, I turn them around and just push the main base against them and it works very well and is much easier then the screwing the rods into the main base.

  13. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Rich Engelhardt View Post
    I use them whenever I have to edge join two pieces of 3/4" plywood.
    Odd reason/odd use, I admit, but, dowels work better than anything else.

    I've salvaged a good bit of otherwise waste pieces that work fine for shop jigs and fixtures & shelves and such for shop cabinets.

    W/the way plywood is layered, glue alone isn't strong enough & biscuits are too hit or miss @ hitting alayer of wood instead of glue.
    The round dowels hit a few layers of wood - just enough to give a decently strong bond.

    I'm sure there's other more legitimate uses - but - I've salvaged enough scraps that my little $12.00 Rockler jig has paid for itself many times over.
    I definitely agree with you - edge gluing plywood to plywood is not a strong joint - you need something to help hold the two pieces together. I use Dominos now but I've used biscuits in the past. Dowels would work but getting the alignment side-to-side seems difficult compared to biscuits. If one hole is just a bit out of alignment, you've got a problem getting the two pieces together.

    Mike
    Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.

  14. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Henderson View Post
    I definitely agree with you - edge gluing plywood to plywood is not a strong joint - you need something to help hold the two pieces together. I use Dominos now but I've used biscuits in the past. Dowels would work but getting the alignment side-to-side seems difficult compared to biscuits. If one hole is just a bit out of alignment, you've got a problem getting the two pieces together.

    Mike
    Mike have you ever use a DowelMax or a Jessem jig?
    The alignment is just not a problem at all, again that is the great thing about these jigs. You use a reference plate for all the holes and as long as you are using the same reference for all parts you will get a perfect aligned joint.

  15. #30
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    Edmonton, Canada
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    2,479
    I have the Jessem version and recently used it extensively in a cabinet build.
    It's a very well built unit and very accurate. I suppose it's as good as (or better) than Dowelmax but both of these have their drawbacks.
    First, it's not as fast as I thought, for example if you are doing dowels on the edge (on one piece) and on face (on another) like cabinets you'll have to change the setup
    on the jig for each drilling.
    Would I buy it again? yes.
    does it replace M/T joins? not all of them, I'd still use M/T for most my furniture applications.
    Is it accurate? Yes, very.
    Is the Jessem a good price? yes.

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