The position of dowels is so critical it's well worth the money to purchase a good doweling jig and use a brad point drill bit. A drill bit tends to follow the soft portions of the wood and can easily throw the position of the dowel hole off unless you have a firm jig clamped to the wood.
Been looking at making a dowel making jig.....
With the price of dowels going up & up & up.... I've been seriously considering making my own dowel making jig. I just bought 6 pieces of 3/8" x 3ft Walnut dowels & I could have bought a 4.5 board foot plank of walnut locally for the price I paid for those 6 dowels.....
I've seen a few different versions of shop made dowel cutters on youtube & other places, but nothing that really jumps out at me. I have a 6bd ft slab of White Ash that I got a great deal on but don't really have a lot of use for right now... & I'm thinking of using that as the jig base.
My though is to laminate it together to make a 2 x 3 block about a foot long & drill holes for 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 9/16, & 5/8 sized dowels.
I've seen a lot of shop made jigs that use just one hole for one size dowel & a chisel for the cutting edge. But who wants to break out a chisel, and jig, and clamps, every time you want to make a dowel....
So, I'm thinking I can use carbide cutter inserts screwed right onto the dowel jig. These carbide inserts:
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They have a 30deg cutting edge, cost about $30 for a pack of 10, and have 4 cutting edges per insert. Once in place, a slight angle adjustment of the cutting edge would fine tune the size of the dowels.
Am I missing anything?
I've seen a few different versions of shop made dowel cutters on youtube & other places, but nothing that really jumps out at me. I have a 6bd ft slab of White Ash that I got a great deal on but don't really have a lot of use for right now... & I'm thinking of using that as the jig base.
My though is to laminate it together to make a 2 x 3 block about a foot long & drill holes for 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 9/16, & 5/8 sized dowels.
I've seen a lot of shop made jigs that use just one hole for one size dowel & a chisel for the cutting edge. But who wants to break out a chisel, and jig, and clamps, every time you want to make a dowel....
So, I'm thinking I can use carbide cutter inserts screwed right onto the dowel jig. These carbide inserts:
They have a 30deg cutting edge, cost about $30 for a pack of 10, and have 4 cutting edges per insert. Once in place, a slight angle adjustment of the cutting edge would fine tune the size of the dowels.
Am I missing anything?
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Fixed it! OF COURSE.... anyone who at least read the first 2 sentences should have known what I was after.
Seen those, but again it's setup for a single size of dowel and uses 3 loose & separate pieces 1 jig + 1 cutter + clamps or vice.
That table saw one looked interesting with the different sized inserts for different dowel sizes.... but also overly complicated. Plus he was using both a table saw, and an electric drill just to cut some dowels.... at that point, might as well get a lathe to make dowels on....
So, this is kind of what I had in mind, substitute: White Ash for the plastic, diamond shaped inserts for the square ones, & have sizes from 1/4in to 1 in in a single block.
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So, I setup a file in my laser engraving program and this is the full bitmap of the file: this would be the front view.
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I ended up with a finished size of 2 5/8" high, 3 3/4" deep, 9 7/8" wide. I've spaced the holes about 20mm apart. If you look very closely, you'll see a dot in the very center of each dowel hole.... that dot & the dowel size fractions are the only things I will be engraving. I have a 1/16" x 6" cobalt M35 drill bit to drill straight through the block at each of the divots the laser will make. I will then be able to drill the front side with a forstner bit 1/64" larger than the dowel rod to a depth of about 1/2" to 3/4" and from the back side drill a hole 1/16" larger than the final dowel size to allow the cut dowels to have room to move without binding.
I've also expanded my design to include dowels up to 1.25" instead of ending at 5/8 because I do occasionally use larger dowels up to the 1 1/4" size & my original sizes left a lot of space for additional sizes!!!
I ended up with a finished size of 2 5/8" high, 3 3/4" deep, 9 7/8" wide. I've spaced the holes about 20mm apart. If you look very closely, you'll see a dot in the very center of each dowel hole.... that dot & the dowel size fractions are the only things I will be engraving. I have a 1/16" x 6" cobalt M35 drill bit to drill straight through the block at each of the divots the laser will make. I will then be able to drill the front side with a forstner bit 1/64" larger than the dowel rod to a depth of about 1/2" to 3/4" and from the back side drill a hole 1/16" larger than the final dowel size to allow the cut dowels to have room to move without binding.
I've also expanded my design to include dowels up to 1.25" instead of ending at 5/8 because I do occasionally use larger dowels up to the 1 1/4" size & my original sizes left a lot of space for additional sizes!!!
I'm missing something here. Not sure I understand your jig. A piece of hardwood drilled oversize front and back 1/64 and 1/16 larger than larger than desired dowel size? Wouldn't oversize forstner bits be hard to come by? Mine are standard sizes. Where is the cutter for each size dowel?So, I setup a file in my laser engraving program and this is the full bitmap of the file: this would be the front view.
![]()
I ended up with a finished size of 2 5/8" high, 3 3/4" deep, 9 7/8" wide. I've spaced the holes about 20mm apart. If you look very closely, you'll see a dot in the very center of each dowel hole.... that dot & the dowel size fractions are the only things I will be engraving. I have a 1/16" x 6" cobalt M35 drill bit to drill straight through the block at each of the divots the laser will make. I will then be able to drill the front side with a forstner bit 1/64" larger than the dowel rod to a depth of about 1/2" to 3/4" and from the back side drill a hole 1/16" larger than the final dowel size to allow the cut dowels to have room to move without binding.
I've also expanded my design to include dowels up to 1.25" instead of ending at 5/8 because I do occasionally use larger dowels up to the 1 1/4" size & my original sizes left a lot of space for additional sizes!!!
Yep.. that does seem to be a problem for some sizes, so I've gotta backup & punt
1 possible solution: Grizzly has a set of 31 Forstner bits that run from 1/4" to 2 1/8" in 1/16" increments - H7694 for $90. I could drill all the holes 1/16" over-sized & just adjust the cutter angle a bit more for exact dowel size I need.
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