Miller Dowels

[George Bokros]

I will building some drawer boxes for my closet organizer project out of maple finished with shellac tinted to an reddish amber. i am thinking about using some walnut or oak Miller Dowels to pin the drawer sides to the fronts just to provide some contrast to the maple. To keep from coloring the walnut or oak I would finish the drawer boxes first then install the miller dowels then apply a clear finish over the exterior of the drawer boxes. Thought of using clear shellac but that would lift and pull the color from the tinted coats, I cannot spray. I could use water based satin poly as the clear top coat but only on the exterior surfaces of the drawers.

Anyway has anyone used the Miller Dowel system in this way? How could I get the dowels flush without removing / scuffing the previously applied shellac?

[Harvey Miller]

I've used them on a plywood cutting table (I didn't want to use screws, so I gave these a shot). I think you'd have to do some test runs and then pre-cut the dowels to the proper length.

[George Bokros]

I would use the mini which are only 1 3/4" long and 1/4 diameter at the top.

[Harvey Miller]

I looked at my kit again, it's the slightly bigger sized one (1x); It looks to me that the drill would tend to leave the dowel sticking out of the hole. Simply put, I think the drill is a designed to leave the top of the dowel a bit proud. I don't think you can flush trim it, in place, without damaging your finish. So I would suggest to trim the dowel top down a bit before tapping it in flush.

[Eric Schmid]

If you clear coat the drawers using several coats before you install the plugs/dowels, and use a very fine Japanese flush cut hand saw, you should be ok cutting the plugs flush in place. The saw will leave very little tooling marks which can be cleaned up with some fine grit sand paper. After the plugs are sanded (and a little of the top coat of clear finish, you can apply the final coat or two of your clear finish over the entire surface where you've installed the plugs. I just did this on a prefinished hickory stair rail. I used a Dozuki (Japanese saw). The saw left no marks on the finish, but the plugs needed to be sanded a bit to smooth the end of the cut plugs. Be patient with the saw and keep the blade flat on the surface.