First time using dowels for joining boards.

[George Bokros]

I am planning to use dowels to maintain alignment in a glue up. I find too much slop in biscuits for this application. I am gluing up a cabinet top and need to make sure they various pieces align end to end and flush to top so I plan to use dowels. Are dowels a good choice??

The top is ~46" wide. I am thinking a dowel at 4" from the end and then every 9 1/2" across the width. Is that a good, too few, too many??

Thanks

[Don Jarvie]

In one of Krenovs books he describes how he made a dowel jig since most of his cabinets he used dowels. I made one myself and it worked well.

[Mike Henderson]

I don't like to use dowels, biscuits or Dominoes to join two boards edge-to-edge. I'd use calus to hold the pieces in place while I added clams.

One problem with all of those is that if you have to cut the panel, you risk cutting into one of those. Then you have to figure out what to do to hide it.

Mike

[Chris Fournier]

Biscuits are only as accurate as the user. Make sure that your biscuit joiner is set up properly with a fence parallel to the blade. Then do a test cut and put one of your biscuits in the slot. Is it loose? Then mist both sides of your biscuits, let them sit and try the fit again. When they are a tight fit you are ready to go.

Biscuits are only as good as the woodworker. Most woodworkers expect magic and when it doesn't happen the process is reviled.

I have yet to cut into a buried biscuit. The lay out is usually dirt simple like say a large flat panel.

[Jamie Buxton]

An issue with dowels is that the hole-to-hole distances must be the same in both boards that you're joining. Biscuits aren't as demanding in that direction.
In the other direction -- the one that results in lippage -- dowels are no better and no worse than biscuits.

[William C Rogers]

Another option is glue joint router bits. I have a set that creates interlocking and makes almost invisible seams and ends. I know when I use them I need to leave an extra inch or so as I can never seem to get that tight. It might be me. I have used both dowels and biscuits. I normally choose the glue joint or biscuits because dowels are such a pain.

[Jerry Thompson]

Mike Henderson shows how he made his cauls on, I think, his web site. I made 10 of them in no time at all and have been using them for panel glue ups for years. The work great and the price was right. I do no know what I would do without them.

[Mark Kornell]

For something like that - where the vertical alignment is critical - I'd use a spline. Cut the grooves using a router in a table or a handheld router. Use a slot-cutting bit with a large-diameter bearing bit to control the cut depth. Mill a spline with a perfect fit. And the pieces have no choice but to line up.

[Rick Lizek]

Been using curved cauls since 1974. Anything else is inefficient and a waste of time. I can glue up a 4 x 8 panel myself before you even finished drilling dowels, or biscuits or domino's. I can't waste my time on such things.

[Mike Schuch]

I use dowels for pretty much all my wide board glue-up. I have a horizontal boring machine that makes quick work of well aligned dowel holes but I have done many many glue-ups using just a doweling jig. I find dowels a great help for alignment.

[George Bokros]

I use dowels for pretty much all my wide board glue-up. I have a horizontal boring machine that makes quick work of well aligned dowel holes but I have done many many glue-ups using just a doweling jig. I find dowels a great help for alignment.


Thank you Mike. My issue with biscuits is the slop in the slot both length wise and top to bottom of the piece. I am gluing up a wide top and need to be dead on both horizontally and across the face. I have used biscuits and I they do not provide the accuracy that dowels can drilled with a precision doweling jig like the Jessem.

[Harry Hall]

Another vote for curved cauls --- for solid wood that is thick enough you really do not need the re-reinforcement unless its end grain. The joint line also has to be jointed properly

[Al Launier]

Frankly, I would use either dowels or biscuits to add additional shear strength, with my personal preference being dowels, plus use cauls to ensure a flush alignment.

[Ronald Blue]

I have a jig similar to this (rockler.com/self-centering-doweling-jig) and while I have used it only a few times it seems to work well. I don't recall if it has a reference mark with each hole size to aid in lining up accurately or not. I am not home so I can't look either. I think a few missed your reasons for wanting to use dowels. You need the alignment to be as perfect "vertically" as you can possibly make it. You aren't looking to add strength only accurately match the boards up so you have only a little sanding to do. I hope you post photos of the finished project. Good luck George.

[Prashun Patel]

Dowels are a good choice for this. Arguably a BETTER choice than Dominos *if* you are talking strictly about alignment and you are using a precision dowel jig like the Jessem or Dowelmax.

These two jigs produce results (in my hands) that are IMHO more accurate than Domino in this case.

The Domino has an oscilating bit and relies on hand pressure as a clamp. It's possible for it to buck up a fraction of an inch. Alignment of the boards *can* be less than perfect. Honestly it's good enough if you don't mind minor leveling.

But the 2 dowel jigs I mention rely on solid clamps to maintain registration. And with a good drill bit, there is little force trying to buck the jig out of alignment. Alignment is PERFECT.

This is the reason I am a proponent of paying for a good - not good enough - dowel jig.

As for how many is enough: I wouldn't do them near the ends; use clamps for that. You only really need them in the center. On a long table, I might go every foot.

[Chris Fournier]

A set of t-bars, proper panel clamps with parallel faces, a dead blow mallet, and a dry run and you really should be able to glue up large flat panels by yourself with no trouble and no registration aids. The dry run really helps when the glue goes on and it's for real.

I bought a Plano panel press for a large run of end grain butcher blocks because it was faster and did not tie up my shop as much as the above process. The results out of the Plano were really no better than the method above, just faster and only 8 feet of wall space was required for the run.

[glenn bradley]

I favor splines. As you want them purely for alignment they are even easier to work with as they can be long grain. A router with a small base and a bearing-guided slot cutter rides the reference surface making a through or stopped groove at a specific distance from that surface on the mating material. You can fit the spline perfectly to the slot. No extra jigs, parts or tools required.

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[fran tarkenton]

I would use a spline for this type of glue up 95 times out of 100. You don't mention if the top is solid wood or plywood. If plywood, splines are exceptionally accurate and easy. One pass with the router (with a slotting bit) on each edge of the mating pieces and you are guaranteed proper alignment. In solid wood, the only potential obstacle to accuracy is if the mating boards aren't dead flat. Any bow or twist will send the router ever so slightly out of true which means planing or sanding later.

[Myk Rian]

Make sure you're using the correct width cutter for the biscuits.

I made this stand using nothing BUT biscuits. 30 of them.

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[George Bokros]

I only have one width cutter for the biscuit joiner. Only thing you can change is depth / length for the various sizes biscuits.

[Mike Henderson]

First of all, you do not need any of those techniques for strength in edge joining boards - dowels, biscuits, Dominoes, etc. - they are strictly for alignment. But if you are going to use them, be careful with dowels. Dowels don't allow any lateral motion - if only one dowel is slightly out of place, the two boards will not go together. With biscuits, you get some lateral alignment adjustment and with Dominoes, you can make the mortise on one side a bit wider than the one on the other side to give you a bit of lateral adjustment.

Biscuits and Dominoes require the operator to hold the tool properly and firmly or you'll have a bit of offset in the panel.

No matter which of those methods you choose, they take time to do them and you have the risk of cutting through one of them.

Cauls are much faster and do an excellent job of aligning boards in a panel glue up. The only negative I see with cauls is storing them between jobs. But they're much faster in a glue up.

Mike