Dowel Making Jig

[Mike Cutler]

I find myself in need of making dowels from time to time ,and I am looking for an efficient, accurate way to make them. I have turned them on the lathe, but that can be a messy process and I'm not really good with a lathe. I get what I need, but it's a struggle to turn a perfect .375" dowel pin. I waste a lot of wood making them.It could be my lathe, but I believe it's just me. I just don;t use a lathe very often.

I have seen these things that look like pencil sharpeners from Lee Valley and I am looking for some real world input on them. Do they work with dense tropical hardwoods such as ebony, African Blackwood, cocobolo, Bocote, to name a few? All of the videos I have seen, the dowels are being made of pine, or a softer domestic hardwood, not a tropical Harwood
I have tried making many of the DIY jigs on You Tube channels, but again, they're always making the dowels out of pine, and I have yet to find one that can turn a dense tropical Harwood dowel accurately.
If they're worth the $50.00, and someone is using them on hard dense woods, I'd appreciate some real feedback.

Thank you.

[Andrew Hughes]

I find the best dowels I make are from Rived wood or split from chunks. Then hammered thru a dowel plate there are limits to this way and dowels do come out slightly bent sometimes. But they fit tight and a bent dowel can be a powerful connection especially draw bore. I was just making some 1/8 dowels yesterday from hickory almost a 1inch long.
Good Luck

[Jamie Buxton]

I bought one of these last year, and I'm quite impressed. https://www.amazon.com/Creker-Speed-...YEALw_wcB&th=1

You don't hammer the stock through the plate, like traditional dowel plates. Instead, you drive it through with a drill. The holes in the plate have cutting edges which cut the dowel to size.

[Richard Coers]

There is no comparison to the more expensive Veritas dowel maker that has two plane blades in it.

[Jim Becker]

I'd go dowel plate (and am planning on that real soon, actually) for this need.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q4RY3T7...lig_dp_it&th=1

[Mike Cutler]

Reply

Thank you gentleman for the information.
I should have specified that I need to make dowels to then cut them down to make the pins I require. The pins are through pins, so they need to be "nice". They are also performing a mechanical function of drawing in the mortised breadboard ends of the project I am work on, pin the breadboard in place, and allow for seasonal expansion and contraction.. They also need to be exact, or the gap between the drilled hole, and the pin diameter shows and has to be filled, which is tedious and not good craftsmanship.
I have been asked to make a number of these cutting boards I first made in 2007. You can see the through pins in the photo here.
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....ard&highlight=

Jim
I will tell you that I have a Lie-Nielsen Dowel plate and it does not work very well on hard tropical woods like Ebony. Anything beyond Jatoba on the Janka scale is a little bit much for it.
It's good for the final sizing, but I need to turn the dowels down very close to their final dimension to get it to work properly. That's what I am doing now, and it's kind of tedious, and If I take one extra pass to many on the lathe, I have to start again.
It's a good tool, don't get me wrong. Some woods are just a pain in the behind to work with.
Don't hammer wenge though it. What a mess that was.

[Andrew Hughes]

That’s what I use is the lie Neilson dowel plate. I agree some woods are too brittle for making dowels. The way I look at it if the wood cannot be split or survive the hammering then it’s not going to be a good dowel.
If frustrating to have a dowel break on draw bore install. Hickory and oak are very reliable.
Good Luck

[Steve Demuth]

I agree that some woods are not suitable for use as dowels (unless the dowel barrel itself is a part of the visual design, rather than being buried in a joint). That said, I use a jig of my own make to manufacture dowels of every size, from almost any wood. The key component is a dowel plane blade made from two pieces of tool steel welded together at a roughly 30^o angle, to form a winged cutter (and then hardened, ground and honed to chisel sharp). That goes on a simple wooden form with a hole to guide and form the dowel. I use it to make dowels of any size from 1/8" diameter up to 3/4 diameter, and pretty much any length that the diameter of the wood will support, in almost any wood - as long as, as Andrew says, it is straight grained enough to eliminate runout of the grain over pretty much the length of the dowel that you want turn.

Setup is simple: Drill a guide hole the diameter of the dowel you want (or maybe 1/64 to 1/32" over) near the edge of 1" stock (hard maple is a good choice, but anything reasonably hard will work, and I get great results with walnut), and taper the input side of the hole with tapered countersink. Sand down the side of the piece to the hole on a stationary belt or disc sander, or whatever works for you, so that you've got a small gap in the barrel of the hole exposed. Generally helps the turning process if you sand a little deeper on the exit side than on the input side. Clamp the blade on the resulting slot, with the wing toward the input side. Maybe dab a little wax into the hole to lubricate the cuts.

To use: Cut square stock 1/16" - 1/8" bigger than the diameter of the dowel you want. Chuck it in a drill and sand a bevel on the leading end. Feed it through the jig at whatever speed works for the material you're cutting.

This s better for hard or difficult woods than anything else I've tried, because the wing cutter planes the square stock down to near circular gradually. To illustrate this, I just went out and made some 5/16" dowels in Katalox (Mexican Ebony). From the time I walked into the shop, until I walked out with 3 dowels from this very hard wood, was less than fifteen minutes, and that included honing the blade, drilling and setting up the jig, cutting the Katalox, and making the dowels. Of course, the actual making part was just a couple of minutes, and I could have done tens of feet of dowels in a few more minutes. The results are in the pictures.

PXL_20240214_180349917.jpgPXL_20240214_180254782.jpgPXL_20240214_171821109.jpgPXL_20240214_171350942.jpgPXL_20240214_171359745.jpgPXL_20240214_171534556.jpgPXL_20240214_171609621.jpgPXL_20240214_171716725.jpg

[Jim Becker]

Mike, have you tried with the dowel plate to doing intermediate steps so that the "final" size is only shaving off just a little more and hopefully, cleanly? And not just pounding, but by using a drill/driver? (I'm just curious) Yea, some species of wood are hard and some are splitery, etc. 'Nature of the beast unfortunately.

[Andrew Hughes]

I agree that some woods are not suitable for use as dowels (unless the dowel barrel itself is a part of the visual design, rather than being buried in a joint). That said, I use a jig of my own make to manufacture dowels of every size, from almost any wood. The key component is a dowel plane blade made from two pieces of tool steel welded together at a roughly 30^o angle, to form a winged cutter (and then hardened, ground and honed to chisel sharp). That goes on a simple wooden form with a hole to guide and form the dowel. I use it to make dowels of any size from 1/8" diameter up to 3/4 diameter, and pretty much any length that the diameter of the wood will support, in almost any wood - as long as, as Andrew says, it is straight grained enough to eliminate runout of the grain over pretty much the length of the dowel that you want turn.

Setup is simple: Drill a guide hole the diameter of the dowel you want (or maybe 1/64 to 1/32" over) near the edge of 1" stock (hard maple is a good choice, but anything reasonably hard will work, and I get great results with walnut), and taper the input side of the hole with tapered countersink. Sand down the side of the piece to the hole on a stationary belt or disc sander, or whatever works for you, so that you've got a small gap in the barrel of the hole exposed. Generally helps the turning process if you sand a little deeper on the exit side than on the input side. Clamp the blade on the resulting slot, with the wing toward the input side. Maybe dab a little wax into the hole to lubricate the cuts.

To use: Cut square stock 1/16" - 1/8" bigger than the diameter of the dowel you want. Chuck it in a drill and sand a bevel on the leading end. Feed it through the jig at whatever speed works for the material you're cutting.

This s better for hard or difficult woods than anything else I've tried, because the wing cutter planes the square stock down to near circular gradually. To illustrate this, I just went out and made some 5/16" dowels in Katalox (Mexican Ebony). From the time I walked into the shop, until I walked out with 3 dowels from this very hard wood, was less than fifteen minutes, and that included honing the blade, drilling and setting up the jig, cutting the Katalox, and making the dowels. Of course, the actual making part was just a couple of minutes, and I could have done tens of feet of dowels in a few more minutes. The results are in the pictures.

PXL_20240214_180349917.jpgPXL_20240214_180254782.jpgPXL_20240214_171821109.jpgPXL_20240214_171350942.jpgPXL_20240214_171359745.jpgPXL_20240214_171534556.jpgPXL_20240214_171609621.jpgPXL_20240214_171716725.jpg

Now that’s a nice jig for making dowels very interesting setup.
Mexican Ebony is a difficult one.

[Andrew Hughes]

I would like to add a suggestion that was given to me Wilson remember wilson? Using a brass hammer when I get close to the final hits if the dowel plate gets dents it’s not going to work as well. Maybe even ruin it.
Here a pic of a walnut dowels I made for the hayrake table. They look rough but fit tight in the holes and the bends can work in my favor for draw boring tight.
I sometimes start with my small claw hammer then finish with a brass.
Good Luck

[Patrick Varley]

One of my recent China tool experiments was buying this thing:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_m0kPVPC

I've only tested it out on some softer woods so far, but works as expected.

[William Hodge]

I peg a lot of tenons in sash. A 12 lite gets 10 pegs, they add up fast.

I use Spanish Cedar pegs, which is softer than a Sapele sash.
I band saw the Spanish Cedar at 17/64" square, for 1/4" holes. I cut the pegs 1 1/4 longer than the sash is thick, and plane them to a taper 4 sides. two swipes witha block plane, four sides, to taper. I drive them in from the interior side, with a dot of glue in the hole. On the exterior, the peg comes out round. On the interior it's square. Saw the extra, and pare with a chisel.

The tapered pegs have a tendency to stay put.

I worked in a door shop where they pegged all the doors with eight sided pegs. Octagonal Walnut pegs in Cherry doors looked god. We made them on a table saw with an angled grooved block sitting over the blade for the wood to ride on.

For draw boring I make the pegs longer, because they need to draw the joint then conform to the hole. The pegs curl in the process.