Dowel Maker

[Bobby Hicks]

Creekers,

While was in Dallas I visited Steve. I asked him about if he knew a source for Oak dowels. He mentioned a few places he knew about and also described a non-lathe method of making your own using a router.

Here is a cut at what he described. I haven't done any web searching or anything for similar devices. Just from Steve's description.

The basics: A block with two concentric holes each half the block depth. The larger is the diameter of the diagonal dimension of your stock. The smaller is the diameter of the resulting dowel. A hole perpendicular to these offset from the centerline half of dowel diameter plus half the router bit diameter, as deep as needed.

I have attached a PDF file illustrating what I came up with. This is not final or perfect. The router bit shone is one I came up with as an illustration only. For the larger dowels the bit would need to be longer.

Let me know what you think.

[Steve Jenkins]

Bobby, you can also use a mortiseing bit and come straight up underneath the center line..pretty cool drawings by the way.
For those that are wondering, to use the jig you mount it to your router table and chuck up the dowel blank in a hand drill. with the router running you simply feed the spinning blank into the block and it routs it nice and round.

[Bobby Hicks]

Steve,

Thanks for the clarification. Forgot to mention the drill spinney part. Was concentrating on the blocks.

The mortising bit may work better since it may not flex as much. Also, after looking around a bit a 2-½” long ½” diameter router bit was the most readily available.
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I’ll take another cut at it.
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[Charlie Plesums]

How about using a plunge bit of any type, and come in from the bottom rather than the side of the jig? Fine adjustments to the dowel diameter can be made with the fine adjustment of the router height. The jig could be built with the same (short) router height for any size dowel. Setup would be to raise the bit to be even with the bottom of the outfeed hole.

[Bobby Hicks]

Creekers,

Added an additional PDF using a 3/4" Dia morticing bit instead.