I was gluing up a small face frame for my drum sander stand (more on that later) and I used dowels as normal.
Got it ready, did a test fit to make sure everything was right. I had 10 dowels on each side, put the glue in the holes and then the dowels, brushed the rest on the joint, put the parts on the one side and now to the other side. Put glue in all the holes pushed in the dowels, brushed the rest on the joint and put the side on.
Put it all in the parallel clamps and started to pull things together...... oh no one end is not coming together, did I not drill the holes deep enough, is there something in the dowel holes, did have have a long dowel in the box.....
So now I am in the panic mode, grabbed the dead blow and knocked things apart, not easy at this point. Got it apart and check the depth of the holes and they were just fine, maybe I had used a long dowel, I had pulled the old dowels out then and pitched them so I couldn't check the length.
Got 4 new dowel and in a panic still put things back together and WHAT the same thing, one end is not coming together. At this point I am not sure what to do and at that point I found that the parallel clamp screw was at it's limit, backed the screw out and slide the head against the frame am draw it right together....
Some days I wonder about myself, things came out just fine but there was a point I was about to just dump the frame and start over.