I had to make a few 'dowels' or rods 80" long and 1 1/8" diameter. Hmm. My steady rest is the delta one with metal rubbing surfaces which would not work for this I figured. I dug out my roller blade wheels and fashioned an aluminum track for each and had a roller steady. I'd have to say that rubber is tough and had to use a razor sharp tool to get them even. This worked very well, so I'll have to make another with bigger capacity as this will only go to 3". 'Shoulda' done this years ago. Now the question was how to get an octagonal piece to roll in this. The first one was very straight so I babied it very slowly and got a round area for the steady, but this didn't work on the rest of them, since they were flexing all over. I got an idea from somewhere out in space and pressed on a piece of PVC pipe that happened to be the right size and all was good. The wood was Liptus - pretty stable in this case but soft. (They all came out within 6 thousandths over the 80")