Originally Posted by
Nicholas Lawrence
It is interesting to see you having success with just banging the dowels through the dowel jig. I have a plate, and if I try to just split stock and hammer them through I usually end up with a fair proportion of kindling. I have better luck starting them into the plate a short distance more or less to mark the size. Then I flip a plane upside down and clamp it in the bench vice and use it to trim the "marked" piece very close to size before putting it all the way through the plate.
The benches are very nice. Not hard to see why they sell.
Nicholas,
Thanks for the kind words.
My dowel pieces do get trimmed with a large chisel first. A large chisel allows for a slicing motion along the length of the riven piece. Before when they were driven through only the 3/8" cutter they would come out a bit sloppy at times. Sizing them first with the 1/2" and then trimming some more improved them greatly.
I am also using my heavy mallet. Care is taken to check with each hit by rotating the cutter to ensure the dowel stock stays square during the process.
It would likely help to have cutters stepped in increments of 1/32" or even less.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)