# Sizing hand made Dowels



## xy mosian (13 Nov 2010)

As some of you may have seen in the general section, I am becoming interested in making Automata. Amongst other things I can foresee a need for dowels of different sizes, and probably different woods. A recent thread on making dowels, https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/dowe ... 45351.html, suggested that it has been quite common to use a long triangular shaped groove, with a stop. Timber is lain in the groove to be planed, occasionally rotating it, to make dowels in the workshop.


mtr1":38hjax40 said:


> I've made miles of oak dowel, every piece of furniture we made at English house(gone now) had pegged joints. We were on a price, so didn't have time to mess about with dowel plates. Quickest way to do them is to use one of these...
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Having thought about this I have come up a jig to help with sizing dowels made in that way. Using the jig shown above, if the right angle bottomed, groove is dimensionally suitable then the plane could be used until it skims the top surface of the jig. At that time the planed surface would be a tangent to the final dowel. 





The Image shows such a jig in use, place the pre-sized stock in the jig, take off the upper corner flush with the jig surface. Rotate the stock ninety degrees and repeat. After taking the corners off you have an octagon which exactly surrounds the required dowel. For some dowelling that may be all the accuracy required.





This chart shows the required dimensions of the groove.

I hope this may be of use to someone.

xy


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