PDA

View Full Version : Dowel Plate Woes



Michael Peet
09-14-2009, 6:56 PM
So I watched Christopher Schwarz's video on draw-boring, a technique I want to use on an upcoming project. I especially liked the part where he made his own dowels with a dowel plate. I thought, "wow, even *I* could hammer a piece of wood through a hole in a steel plate. Then I can use the kind of wood I want and have it match the rest of the project." So I ordered one, the same Lie-Nielsen model Chris used.

It came in the mail today, my first LN purchase. I ripped open the package excitedly and ran down to the shop to make some dowels. Split off a little piece of cedar, knocked the corners down, sharpened it a little, and banged it through the 1/4" hole. Hmm, not too straight. Or smooth. Or round.

Well, it's my first try, I think. I do it again. Same thing. Again. Even worse.

Hmm. I try a different hammer. Then a mallet. And a sledge. Nothing too spectacular, although I got a beaut of a blood blister on my thumb now too (don't ask).

I think, well cedar is a pretty soft wood. Let's try oak - what Chris used in the video - to see if that comes out any better. Nope.

Am I supposed to be using greener wood? Should I have lapped the plate first? Any dowel plate gurus care to share the secret? All I can tell you is that I don't think I am forcing a too-big piece through the 1/4" hole - I pick the biggest hole it will just barely not fit through and progress down from that. Usually it was just the next largest hole up from 1/4". I'm using pretty straight-grained pieces too, with the grain running the length of the dowel-to-be (or not-to-be).

Thanks in advance!

Mike

Tony Zaffuto
09-14-2009, 7:34 PM
Sounds a lot like the problems I had with mine. I was able to get reasonably decent dowels by splitting the stock and planing off the edges to get it close to round. Still, not what I expected!

Harlan Barnhart
09-14-2009, 7:55 PM
Interesting... I was just thinking of bumping a LN dowel plate up on my "must have" list for use in drawboring. Maybe I'll stick to my current method (split from a straight grained block and "round" with a chisel) a little longer. For what it's worth, in softer woods like poplar and white pine, I have found that "mostly round" is round enough. After installation and planing they look round. But then again, I have never used pins larger than 1/4". From my vast experience of drawboring (22 joints if I count correctly) I wouldn't recommend using a soft wood for the pin or you won't be able to offset enough to do much "drawing". In which case you may as well assemble with clamps and glue then drill and install the pin later. Also the end grain creates as much contrast as using a hardwood pin.

David Gendron
09-14-2009, 8:25 PM
I do have the dowell plate from LN and just love it. The way I use it is I slpit a piece from staight grain stock and go from a rough square to a nice square with a draw knife and then to an octogon with the draw knife and bring it "close" to the dowel size and tap it thrue the plate after sharpening one end with a knife!
Hoppe it helps!
David

Allan Brown
09-14-2009, 8:38 PM
I've used the LN dowel plate for nearly two years and really like it. Perhaps you're expecting perfectly round dowels. While that may be achievable, I hardly think it worth the effort. I've used it for Walnut, Maple, Cherry and Bubinga dowels throughout its range...not all perfectly round, but all perfectly serviceable.
Allan

John Powers
09-14-2009, 8:39 PM
Good stuff. I wanted one but the price is incrdeible. Can't believe one of the irnomongers on this site or Woodnet.net hasn't knocked them off. Not surprised that cedar won't work. I'd figure on using something harder and straighter. I'm saving for a LN low angle block plane and I screwed up not getting it when it was $75.00 instead of $95.00 so I get my dowels at Home depot.

David Gendron
09-14-2009, 9:01 PM
Look at Jim bode tool web page, I think his got one for sale, not a LN but a vintage one that should be as good!

harry strasil
09-14-2009, 9:09 PM
Its more than likely your hammering technique, hit a nail on one side and it bends away from the blow, same with making dowels with a plate, you have to hit it fair and square, an old blacksmith term.

For what its worth, I mounted my 2 dowel plates to hard wood and drilled the holes thru, then turned them over and oversized the holes by a 64th so they don't stick in the hole as bad,

small plate,

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/dowelplatesmall.jpg

large plate,

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/dowelplatelarge.jpg

And I do drive them thru successively smaller holes, but my plates also have 1/32 oversize holes too.

Luke Townsley
09-14-2009, 9:58 PM
My "dowel plate" is just some bronze plumbing fittings screwed into a block of wood. It doesn't work perfectly, but it doesn't rust either. With a bit of judicious filing, it would probably do better.

I haven't seriously used it. I think I might have made it when I was making my workbench.

I suspect that air dried wood would respond better than kiln dried wood.

Chuck Nickerson
09-15-2009, 12:25 PM
Like you, Chris' DVD inspired me to buy LN's dowel plate, and my results matched yours exactly. For me, the fix was in Harry's advice and lowering my expectations. Looking at my sort-of-dowels, it was clear my blows were also driving the peg from side to side. Looking at my hammer face and swing, I found a work surface at belt height. That solved my problem.

Russ Hauser
09-15-2009, 1:54 PM
You don't have to buy a dowel plate, they're easy enough to make. I made my latest from 1 inch wide x 1/8 thick angle iron. The angle allows me to clamp the angle in my wood faced Emmert vise, so both hands are free, with one to help keep the dowel going straight thru the plate. The holes are redrilled from the back side like Harry's. I 've made dowels down to 1/16 dia using my own plates. In the smaller sizes you must pull the dowels thru the plate. When driving them I don't drive them very hard and strive to "Hit them fair and square."

Russ

Charles Murray Ohio
09-15-2009, 2:28 PM
I like the idea of a hardwood backing plate to help keep your dowel straight. A dowel plate will work much easier with hardwoods (remember it’s a scraping action not cutting). Use straight grained stock, rive it out then knock off the corners. Start by taping it through the larger sizes and work your way down until you reach the diameter you want. This takes a little off at a time and helps prevent you from tearing the stock up.

Sam Yerardi
09-15-2009, 2:51 PM
Hi Charles! Just wanted to say hi to a fellow SAPFM member....

Charles Murray Ohio
09-15-2009, 8:39 PM
Sam,

Will you be at our local SAPFM meeting at the end of the month?

Charles

Sam Yerardi
09-15-2009, 9:28 PM
I'm planning on it... How about you?

(Sorry to hijack this thread guys :) )

Don Dorn
09-15-2009, 9:39 PM
I borrowed a friends and discovered the same issue. In wanting to make a dowel hinge for a small box, I tried a few things to make them but discovered the best was to buy a dowel of that species and then run it through the dowel plate. It goes in easily but not perfect, but comes out that way. To ask more of it seems like a headache.

Eric Brown
09-16-2009, 6:18 AM
Try using a little wax on the dowel. It runs through much easier.

Eric

Danny Burns
09-16-2009, 11:50 AM
Split off a little piece of cedar, knocked the corners down, sharpened it a little, and banged it through the 1/4" hole. Hmm, not too straight. Or smooth. Or round.

Well, it's my first try, I think. I do it again. Same thing. Again. Even worse.


Three things come to mind.

1- Bad dowel plate, might need sharpening.
"Maintenance: If the dowel plate ever needs it, hone the top cutting surface with water stones to sharpen. Keep oiled to prevent rusting."

2- "Short pieces are easier to handle, but any length is fine. When making your own dowel, get ***as close as you can*** to the correct size with a plane, spokeshave or drawknife. The blank does not have to be very smooth, though small facets will disappear quickly. A bit of experimenting will tell you how close to make your blank, depending on the type of wood, length of dowel and how smooth a finish you desire. Chamfer the leading end of the blank to make it easy to start the cut. Hammer the blank through the hole. You can also use it to size purchased dowels."

Above two quotes from : http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?sku=DP


3- Softwood problems.


"David Charlesworth extols the virtues of making dowel plates
to turn offcuts into hardwood pegs" - from PDF

http://www.lie-nielsen.com/pdf/charlesworth_dowelplate.pdf

Michael Peet
09-16-2009, 2:11 PM
Thanks for the excellent feedback everyone. I did use split, straight-grained stock. Harry, thanks for the pointer on hammering "fair and square"; I will try to concentrate on that.

Just to be clear - this is very nicely made piece of hardware and I didn't intend to dissuade anyone from getting one. As with so many aspects of this craft, it looks easier to use than it is ;)

Best,

Mike

harry strasil
09-16-2009, 3:25 PM
in the FWIW dept,

According to the old mentality or way of doing things there were no dowels per se, anything under a 1/2 inch was called a pin, 1/2 inch up to 1 inch were called pegs, 1 inch and over were called Trunnels, a misspronunciation of treenail.

Generally the old timers did not glue there wooden nails in, they were made oversize and this along with the crookedness of the fasteners made for a very tight fit.

Also when there was a barn or house raising, the children who could help often were put to work making Trunnels by driving riven material thru plates of iron with a hole in it with a mallet over the open top of a barrel, often times said barrel was an old one made by a wet cooper and had some linseed oil in it which helped lubricate the Trunnels.

If you have ever attempted to salvage the timbers from an old timber frame structure, you will find that even after all the years it has stood you cannot back out the Trunnels.

This is because the Trunnels were oversize and pointed and when driven in the tapered end automatically drew the joint together like WWers now use drawbore pins for. and the oversize fastener bent the end grain of the timbers to effectively LOCK them in place.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/trunnal.jpg

Old structures often had any floorboards and siding pegged or pinned in place instead of using nails, as when you nail something, the metal nail swells and shrinks with temperature and automatically draws moisture which starts rotting the wood its driven into.

You might wonder how simple pegs could hold flooring and siding on. Well if you nail or peg or pin something correctly, you never drive the fastener straight in, but the fasteners will be slanted towards each other \ / , which is an effective method to prevent the fastened piece from spring loose or pulling up because of warping.

In really old homes and buildings, the floor boards were also joined at the edges with inlaid dovetailed pieces, which were called butterfly's to keep the flooring from having large cracks between boards when the shrank from the drying process.

I hope this is a good galoot/neander explanation of things from the past.

Eric Brown
09-16-2009, 5:09 PM
Thank you so much for the historical perspective Jr..
When you going to write a book for us?
I love learning from people like you.

Eric

Don C Peterson
09-16-2009, 5:21 PM
To amplify a bit on Jr's comments, it doesn't matter if the dowels are perfectly straight or smooth. The benefit of using a dowel plate is that the dowels follow the grain. In turned dowels there is almost always grain run-out which makes the dowels significantly weaker but potentially straighter.

Grain run-out, particularly when drawboring, is potentially disastrous.

harry strasil
09-16-2009, 5:27 PM
I'm just passing info I gleaned from already written old books, I like to read, and collect every old technical manual I can.

Ian Coop
09-16-2009, 6:07 PM
Hello Michael, I too had results similar to yours. I use a v groove and stop in a block of wood and a block plane to take the straight grained wood down to an almost round blank with a diameter slightly larger than the intended dowel.

I then cut the blank into pieces 1 to 2 inches in length, depending on what I need.

The blanks are then sharpened on one end with a blck plane or pencil sharpener.

Reverse the steel dowel plate. In other words drive the blank from the side of the plate that does not have the size etched into it, the side that has the .006 clearance. This shaves the blank close to the size required.

Then place the dowel plate right side up again and pass the blanks a final time through the holes the right direction. This shaves the final diameter.

Most of the dowels created remain pretty straight and most do not have too mcuh in the way of tear out. Use a little wax on the dowling plate as suggested too.

Strange but true, it works better for me.

Ian

David Keller NC
09-16-2009, 6:20 PM
Michael - I have and frequently use the L-N dowel plate. As you may have gathered, this gizmo works very well for making drawbore pins and wooden pegs, but the name "Dowel Plate" is a bit misleading.

One wants reasonably close to straight drawbore pins and pegs to secure mortise and tenon joints, but this tool is not capable of, nor designed for, making dowels in the sense of something you might use as a visible part of the construction - say spindles for a Windsor chair, or parts for a wooden hinge.

If that's what you need (perfectly circular and straight dowels), the best method is to make them on a lathe out of riven stock. Dowels in the store are usually not circular, as the manufacturing process uses somewhat wet stock that's pulled through a die with hydraulics. Once the dowels dry thoroughly, they aren't round anymore.

Michael Peet
09-16-2009, 7:03 PM
Interesting Ian, I may have to try that.

David, I don't need anything that long - just a couple inches. They would be used as pins in a mortise and tenon joint, for both structural and aesthetic purposes. For the visual reason, I was hoping they would at least be round where I cut them off to prevent any gaps.

Thanks guys -

Mike

David Marcus Brown
09-17-2009, 12:52 PM
Good stuff. I wanted one but the price is incrdeible. Can't believe one of the irnomongers on this site or Woodnet.net hasn't knocked them off. Not surprised that cedar won't work. I'd figure on using something harder and straighter. I'm saving for a LN low angle block plane and I screwed up not getting it when it was $75.00 instead of $95.00 so I get my dowels at Home depot.

I needed some 1/4" dowel last weekend and all I had was 5/16ths. Looking in the shop I had a scrap of mild steel so I drilled a 1/4" hole in it. That did the job nicely.

I need to relieve the back of the hole a little to make extracting the dowels easier. I like the design of the LN plate -- it inspired me to make my own. :D

harry strasil
09-17-2009, 8:46 PM
Just for the heck of it, I got a piece of old somewhat punky cedar and tried makeing a couple of dowels. LOL I just rived them with a knife froe and tapered the ends with a chisel and drove em thru. a 1/4 and a 3/8.

David Barbee
09-17-2009, 8:58 PM
I also have the Lie-Nielsen dowel plate. I have a few tip, hints & suggestions..



If you looking to make a 1/4 dowel, plane a board down to 5/16 and then rive your blanks. Do your best to keep the blanks square. This will remove most of the waste wood for you. They will be much so easier to drive.
If it first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. I have a 3lb sledge that I use for 3/8+ dowels. I get more controlled power and a much larger head. As your arm gets tired or you are trying to hit the dowel to hard, it is easy not to hit the dowel square.
This is caveman woodworking. If you were the kid that refused to believe that the square peg wouldn't go though the round hole, then this is the job to you. The dowels that result from this brutality are not going to be very pretty. They will however be very strong and well suited for pegging mortise and tenon joints.
If you are using your workbench, make sure you put the dowel plate as close as you can to being over the leg. This transfers the power from the blow directly to the floor. Not only does this mean you can take less hammer blows, it also means that the dowel plate won't be jumping around and you hammer blows will be more accurate.
There is a reason why peg making was left to apprentices. It's a lot of thankless work.

David B.

David Marcus Brown
09-17-2009, 9:08 PM
Just for the heck of it, I got a piece of old somewhat punky cedar and tried makeing . . .

Harry, you're like the MacGuyver of woodworking. I think with some wood and your tools you could make just about anything. The world needs more guys like you. http://www.forums.woodnet.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowcool.gif

Harlan Barnhart
09-17-2009, 9:36 PM
Harry, you're like the MacGuyver of woodworking. I think with some wood and your tools you could make just about anything. The world needs more guys like you. http://www.forums.woodnet.net/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowcool.gif
So true. If a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon should wander onto this site and post some pictures of the tools they use, I imagine Mr. Strasil would soon post pictures of similar tools he forged himself...

harry strasil
09-18-2009, 12:05 AM
FWIW, I find the dowels go thru the holes easier if I hold onto the dowel while pounding it thru.

Michael Peet
09-18-2009, 11:15 AM
FWIW, I find the dowels go thru the holes easier if I hold onto the dowel while pounding it thru.

That's how I ended up with my blood blister, LOL. Well, that combined with bad aim :rolleyes: ...

I spent some more time last night working on this technique. Used a 5-lb sledge and tried to focus on hitting it squarely and evenly. Had some better luck. Also had really decent results on some bits of cherry, leading me to believe this could be easier with the harder woods.

Thanks everyone for all your input.

Mike

Bob Strawn
09-18-2009, 2:20 PM
I'm just passing info I gleaned from already written old books, I like to read, and collect every old technical manual I can.

You have my gratitude for passing on such data, now I am going to have to make myself a dowel plate!

Bob

NICK BARBOZA
09-21-2009, 9:04 AM
I used my LN dowel plate this weekend for the first time. It worked great! I needed some cocobolo pegs for a table I am building. I cut the pieces 3/8" square then planed them in a "v-block" to make them octagonal. after that I just pounded it through the plate.

This post had put fear in me that it wouldnt work well for what I was expecting. But i was pleasantly surprised at my success. As previously stated, it was by no means clean enough to leave exposed but as a peg for a tenon, it is perfect.

Cheers,
NWB

Don Rogers
09-21-2009, 9:26 AM
I have not used dowels very much but would like to know -

In making a dowel plate, what hole sizes are recommended? Nominal, Undersize, or oversize?

In other words, will a dowel made in a 1/4" nominal size hole be a good fit for a 1/4"hole drilled in the wood or does the dowel plate hole need to be slightly under or over-sized? Perhaps this also depends on the kind of wood used for both.

DonR

harry strasil
09-23-2009, 1:03 AM
driving thru a hole has a tendency to compress the dowel a bit. fwiw

harry strasil
09-23-2009, 5:41 AM
A Dowel or peg Box has been mentioned several times in this thread, for those that don't know what one is, here is mine, I has 2 V grooves in it, a small and a large, with a 1/4 inch dowel or pin drove into the end as a stop . The little plane is a dowel or peg fluting plane with a sharp 60 degree Vee included angle cutter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/dowelboxandfluttingplane.jpg

Don Rogers
09-23-2009, 10:19 AM
Thanks Harry,

Your dowel block is also something useful to me - not only for dowels but also for removing the corners of a square block before working it on the lathe.

You keep posting pictures of your homemade tools but I 'm not sure I have the time to make all of them. I'll keep trying.

Please show us some more.

DonR

Dominic Greco
09-23-2009, 10:38 AM
A Dowel or peg Box has been mentioned several times in this thread, for those that don't know what one is, here is mine, I has 2 V grooves in it, a small and a large, with a 1/4 inch dowel or pin drove into the end as a stop . The little plane is a dowel or peg fluting plane with a sharp 60 degree Vee included angle cutter.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/dowelboxandfluttingplane.jpg

Very practical and I bet it's easy to use as well!:o

george wilson
09-23-2009, 1:53 PM
Is it necessary to use a 5# hammer? Use of too heavy a hammer doesn't help your aim.

Dave Cav
08-10-2011, 9:29 PM
I just ran across this thread this afternoon while I was trying to make some ebony pins for breadboard ends. Good information. I made a dowel plate out of a piece of 3/8" mild steel plate with a 1/4" hole drilled in it. I figured out Harry's V-groove peg box on my own, but until reading through the thread it didn't occur to me to do the pins in stages. I drilled another hole in the plate 17/64" and hammered them through that one first. It did make the final 1/4" pins a bit cleaner and smoother. I was using small ball pien hammer (about 12 oz) so a huge hammer isn't necessary. I also found if you hold the stock straight up and down while driving it through it usually does go straighter. I put the plate over a dog hole in my bench and drove them down through that.

Ebony is difficult to successfully use for pins. I had about a 40% reject rate and the wood kept splitting; I found if I kept my stock to about 2" long it worked a lot better and wasted less. I also made some out of sapele and it worked fine.

And, I also have a blood blister on my left ring finger fingernail...

george wilson
08-10-2011, 9:41 PM
You are supposed to taper the holes in a dowel plate. Use a taper reamer,not one that is extremely tapered,though. Those "repairman's" reamers that General sells are too tapered. I would use what is called a "taper pin reamer". Trouble is,you might not be able to find one handy,or know what they look like. They come in different size ranges,and were used for reaming out tapered holes for putting tapered pins in to hold handles on lathes and other machine uses. Then,everyone started using those ugly coiled pins,and quit using taper pin reamers. another way to cheapen work,in my opinion.

Taper pin reamers have ABOUT the same taper as a violin peg.

Anyhow,when you sharpen the dowel plate by grinding the top surface a little,it doesn't enlarge the holes too radically, and the tapered hole gives a sharper(less than 90 º) cutting edge to the dowel plate.

David Keller NC
08-10-2011, 10:11 PM
Dave - What George said is good advice, particularly if you're using a hard, brittle wood (like ebony). This is one reason that you might want to spring for Lie-Nielsen's dowel plate if you're going to be regularly making pins.

Here's another couple of tips, though, that might substantially improve your success rate. The first one is to rive your pins. While you can make a pin out of sawn blanks, the failure rate is a lot higher. The second is a bit fancier: after you roughly rive and whittle your pins, chuck them in a universal chuck brace (preferably one with a 10" or 12" throw), and spin the blank as you lean on the brace to drive it through the dowel plate. I've not had one split by doing this (in contrast to driving the pins with a wooden mallet).


If you don't have a brace or just prefer to drive the pins through with a hammer, consider using a wooden or urethane faced hammer instead of a metal one, and chamfer the sharp edge at both ends of the pin before you drive it through the plate. While doing that won't eliminate splitting entirely, it does help.

paul cottingham
08-10-2011, 11:34 PM
I mounted mine in my bench top. I mortised the top just enough that the plat sits flush with the top, and drilled out the bench underneath, Works great. The pegs aren't perfectly round, but they work great.

Jim Matthews
08-11-2011, 7:10 AM
Now THAT'S clever, Russ.

I use one of these (http://giantcypress.net/post/3197223411/japanese-chamfer-plane). It will work on any diameter dowel.

Michael Peet
08-11-2011, 7:15 AM
Heh, funny to see my old thread resurrected. Dave, I found as you did that removing less material with the dowel plate resulted in better dowels. I started manually paring between the 1/2" and 3/8" (final dimension) stages of the dowel plate. And yes, rive (split) the blanks.

204686 204685 204688 204687

Thanks for the help!

Mike

george wilson
08-11-2011, 11:24 AM
Everybody,be careful to not hit the dowel plate with a steel hammer. You don't want to dent the edges of the dowel holes.

Jerome Hanby
08-11-2011, 11:29 AM
Seems like I saw a suggestion someplace to use a block plane to make the blanks roughly octagonal befor driving them through the plate. Seems like that would get rid of even more material that the plate wouldn't have to deal with...


Heh, funny to see my old thread resurrected. Dave, I found as you did that removing less material with the dowel plate resulted in better dowels. I started manually paring between the 1/2" and 3/8" (final dimension) stages of the dowel plate. And yes, rive (split) the blanks.

204686 204685 204688 204687

Thanks for the help!

Mike

harry strasil
08-11-2011, 11:54 AM
If you will notice in pictures of my dowel plates, I have them mounted on oak and screwed to the oak so they don't move around. This makes for a straighter peg (dowel), and I use a piece of 1/4" brass rod as a punch to finish driving the peg thru till it falls out. I have also found that using a metal hammer to drive the dowels thru the plate goes better than using a wooden mallet as the woods have a spring action and the mallet does not drive the dowels as well as the metal hammer and the wooden mallet also has a tendency to mangle the driven end and often split it beyond salvaging.

FWIW, I made my dowel plates out of truck leaf springs after annealling them a bit, then rehardening after drilling all the necessary holes and attachment holes. And to save someone the trouble of asking, I just used the black cobalt smithing drill bits with a slow speed and constant pressure and old black thread cutting oil.

Another trick I use is to taper both ends of a rived peg blank and start it in a slightly larger hole in my dowel plate and tap it lightly to make an impression of size on both ends and then use a block plane or spoke shave to shave a lot of the excess from the blank before driving it through the plates holes.

James Owen
08-11-2011, 1:06 PM
My tool set also has an LN dowel plate, and I get great results from it -- but, there was a learning curve at first.

Along with all the other great suggestions already mentioned in the rest of this thread, one of the things that I had to learn, and that I haven't seen here so far, might be of some use: check the grain orientation of the piece of wood you're trying to drive through the dowel plate. It's been my experience that orienting the grain in the same fashion you would if you were hand planing it generally gives better results. Think of the dowel plate as the cutting edge of the plane iron and orient the grain appropriately: visualize the dowel plate as being a stationary hand plane (like a cooper's jointer) and you're moving the wood across the iron -- otherwise the dowel frequently ends up with (a lot of) "tear-out."
_____

On another note: Thanks Jr for a great piece of history!!!

george wilson
08-11-2011, 1:38 PM
But how can you orient the grain correctly since the dowel plate is cutting ALL of the sides of the dowel at once?????

Chris Vandiver
08-11-2011, 1:44 PM
On any given pin, the grain goes in 2 different(opposite) directions, so trying to orient the grain will be mostly futile.

george wilson
08-11-2011, 1:46 PM
The best you can do is split out the dowel blanks. That will give you the most "neutral" grain orientation possible.

Paul Incognito
08-11-2011, 6:07 PM
I made a dowel plate from an old circular saw blade. Drilled a hole in it, clamped it over a dog hole in my bench and smashed some riven white oak through it.
By the time I was done with 8 or 10 pegs the blade was trashed, but it worked just fine for what I needed.
Paul

Steve Thomas
08-11-2011, 7:19 PM
OP, not sure if your expectations are too high. Commercially made dowel is machined and is of course a "perfect" product. and you'll never match that with your bashed dowels.

Like other posters I have a made on with an old 1/4 lump of steel plate i found.

the sides of the dowel are often torn, and don't look that great, but they are round.
as you only see the ends in your joint, they will work just great.

If i want a 12mm dowel i'll bash it through the 15mm hole, 14mm hole, 13mm hole and then finally the 12.
:)

Jerome Hanby
08-11-2011, 8:13 PM
If I needed a 12 mm dowel, I'd wonder how the heck I wound up in France :eek:.


OP, not sure if your expectations are too high. Commercially made dowel is machined and is of course a "perfect" product. and you'll never match that with your bashed dowels.

Like other posters I have a made on with an old 1/4 lump of steel plate i found.

the sides of the dowel are often torn, and don't look that great, but they are round.
as you only see the ends in your joint, they will work just great.

If i want a 12mm dowel i'll bash it through the 15mm hole, 14mm hole, 13mm hole and then finally the 12.
:)

Caspar Hauser
08-11-2011, 8:55 PM
If I needed a 12 mm dowel, I'd wonder how the heck I wound up in France :eek:.Or unexpectedly orbiting the Sun..

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

or not..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

harry strasil
08-13-2011, 12:28 PM
The oldtimers turned a dowel or used a shaving horse and drawknife, spokeshave and scraper if they needed a chair spindle or some exposed round wood. Mostly pegs (short dowels today) were used to fasten or join joints together in the olden days and they didn't need to be absolutely straight.

I see in Fine Woodworkings latest e-letter that they have jumped on the wagon about using dowel plates to make pegs and pins.

Bill Moser
08-13-2011, 3:53 PM
What Dave K said, and others have alluded to -- rive the pins (with a chisel, generally) down to pretty close to the diameter you want. Of course, to do that, you need easily-riven wood, like oak, say. I love my LN dowel plate -- the most fun with a hammer you can have, IMHO. I tried ebony once, but it didn't work out well. It seems to me that if you want the look of ebony, use the Greene & Greene method: use a srtucturally sound wood for the pin, but cap it with the wood that will be the most pleasing for show

Steve Thomas
08-19-2011, 10:24 AM
Don't over think it guys

Here is a video of me making a "dowel"

http://youtu.be/Z1GeA-6551Y

I made my plate from scrap steel, it's not quite 6mm thick and is covered in paint.
I drilled an array of holes using every drill bit i had at the time 6mm through 13mm
I have used it for 5 years now and never "sharpened it" or tapered the holes. both of which I'm sure would improve it's use and finish of the end product but for pinning joints, round is round.
But this makes good dowels.

If I'm making whole bunch i put a bucket under the bench and use the next one to push the first one through. it's pretty efficient. When i made 12 large entrance doors last year i made a dowel jig for the router and that is worth the effort too.

Steve Branam
08-19-2011, 9:05 PM
Wow, Steve, now I have chisel envy! That is one nice hunk of metal!

Steve Thomas
08-20-2011, 4:04 AM
yeah i love it. nothing like a little mass to help split timber.
It's an old old Witherby, new to me about two years ago.

Jessica Pierce-LaRose
08-23-2011, 7:03 PM
Was searching for an article I remembered reading in an old FWW from the last year or two, and stumbled across an article where the other makes dowel rod by running it through a homemade dowel plate, but rather than hammering, he chucks it in a power drill and runs the drill as he presses it through. I've no experience with dowel plates (yet . . . ) anyone have comments on that method? I believe the article (you'd think I could remember something for more than an hour or two) he actually started with store-bought dowels that were a bit oversized...

Jerome Hanby
08-24-2011, 9:02 AM
There is a jig in one of Hylton's books (router magic I think) that uses a technique like that. Think it's a cove bit in the router, table mounted router with the jig on top so that the bit protrudes through the edge of a hole, and the stock is chucked into a drill and pushed through the hole while the drill is spinning it and the router is running.

Here is a picture...

205968


Was searching for an article I remembered reading in an old FWW from the last year or two, and stumbled across an article where the other makes dowel rod by running it through a homemade dowel plate, but rather than hammering, he chucks it in a power drill and runs the drill as he presses it through. I've no experience with dowel plates (yet . . . ) anyone have comments on that method? I believe the article (you'd think I could remember something for more than an hour or two) he actually started with store-bought dowels that were a bit oversized...

Ron Kellison
08-24-2011, 9:16 AM
Lee Valley sell a dowel maker but it might be overkill for your needs. http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=42331&cat=1,180,42288

Regards,

Ron

Steve Branam
08-24-2011, 9:05 PM
You may be thinking of this online article and discussion: http://www.finewoodworking.com/item/40048/make-your-own-dowels. Hey, I know one of those people!

Dean Chapel
08-25-2011, 1:48 PM
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that the dowel does not have to be hammered through the jig, but instead an be gripped in a drill and spun through the jig. Less violent and you can use less than perfectly straight material. The dowel will be HOT when it comes out. Lay on a flat table and roll it and it will straighten up nicely if crooked.

Jessica Pierce-LaRose
08-25-2011, 1:55 PM
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that the dowel does not have to be hammered through the jig, but instead an be gripped in a drill and spun through the jig. Less violent and you can use less than perfectly straight material. The dowel will be HOT when it comes out. Lay on a flat table and roll it and it will straighten up nicely if crooked.

Yeah, I was just asking about that about four posts up. I saw it mentioned in an issue of FWW. You've had good luck with it? I'll have to give it a try.

David Keller NC
08-25-2011, 8:04 PM
There is a jig in one of Hylton's books (router magic I think) that uses a technique like that. Think it's a cove bit in the router, table mounted router with the jig on top so that the bit protrudes through the edge of a hole, and the stock is chucked into a drill and pushed through the hole while the drill is spinning it and the router is running.


What an absurdly ridiculous way of insisting on using power tools for everything. Sort of like absolutely insisting on spending several hours sanding a table surface because handplanes are so "horse and buggy".:)

harry strasil
08-26-2011, 10:10 PM
I have seen one person chuck a length of dowel in a power hand drill and force it thru what could be called a dowel plate to compress it some to fit in a hole and then it will expand after insertion. FWIW

Unless of course you have an old Stanley Rotary Dowel plate around.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/stanleydowelmaker.jpg

and for short dowels, one of the tenoners.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/Picture002.jpg

Jerome Hanby
08-29-2011, 9:00 AM
What an absurdly ridiculous way of insisting on using power tools for everything. Sort of like absolutely insisting on spending several hours sanding a table surface because handplanes are so "horse and buggy".:)

I don't think it's that absurd. From what I've read of other folks use of dowel plates, you don't always get a nice smooth surface and to get best results you need to split out the stock you feed through and there is a definite limit on the length of stock you can hammer through it. The router jig turns out nice smooth stock and the length is not really limited. You probably would get "better" dowels if you split out the stock to feed through it, but you would get pretty decent dowels just ripping down stock on the table saw. I know this is the hand tools forum, but the original poster did start out talking about problems so alternate solution suggestions seem appropriate.