[rmorgan66]

Dumb question, making a podium for my daughter for school. Going to make base 45 degrees on all corners and I want to use wood dowels to secure it. How do I join 2 pieces of wood at the 45 deg corners and use dowels to join the two together:blink:

 

[woodnthings]

that won't assemble

The dowels need to be parallel with the sides, or you can't put it together, unless I'm mistaken. You can join two corners together, then join those "L" shaped pieces together because the dowels will then be parallel:
Shown here:
http://www.woodshoptips.com/tips/122903/122903.pdf

A spline or a biscuit might work better.
A splined mitered corner I used on my kitchen cabinet doors:

 

[GoNavy429]

The dowels need to be 90 degrees to the miter joint. You need a dowel jig to position them exactly in the same spot on both sides of the miter joint, doesn't matter if it's 45 degrees, 30 degrees or any degree in between as long as you stay 90 degrees to that joint they go together fine. Barring that free handing it is next to impossible to get a tight clean joint. The newer way of doing this now days is with a Kreg jig and drilling angled pocket holes and screw the joint together and/or gluing as well. Much easier to do and way more accurate. Additionally plugs can be used to hide the screw holes, so you get the same effect, but even those will still be 90 degrees to the miter joint.

If you must use dowels and you don't have a jig, then your best bet would be to use a horizontal drill press and use a stop block and clamp your pieces to get your holes in the same place on each piece. Dowel jigs and hand drills are much easier...lol...probably why they make them.

 

[MNsawyergp]

As the others who replied have said, the dowels have to be perpendicular to the face of the joint. The hard part is clamping this type of joint together. It takes a lot of force to pull all the corners together with the friction of the dowels at work. A web clamp with metal corner protectors would be one option. Be prepared with a pounding block and hammer to persuade the pieces together.

Here is a link for a doweling jig...

http://store.mannyswoodworkersplace.com/6110102.html

Here is a link for a web clamp...

http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/page.aspx?p=31160&cat=1,43838