What diameter & length dowel?

[el_Pedr0]

I'm planning on making a wine rack out of solid ash. Part of the rack is like this:

I'm planning on fixing the horizontal rails (shown in green above) using only dowels and glue so that no fixings are visible. The dimensions of a rails are 20mm x 20mm x 340mm. The vertical supports are 19mm thick and 70mm wide.

For the rails either side of the central vertical support, I'm considering drilling straight through the vertial support and using a single dowel to locate the rails on either side.

Is this a reasonable plan for fixing the rails?
How far should my dowels protrude into the rails?
What diameter dowel would be appropriate?

 

[MARK.B.]

I would probably go with dowels around 5 or 6mm thick,that will be plenty strong enough to support a bottle of wine but you could go 8-10mm, set them into the rails by around 10mm.

 

[Richard_C]

6mm is a common size and if I recall are cheap in big bags. You will probably find standard sizes, e.g 6x20 which gives you the drilling depth without any hard thinking. Being smaller gives you more wriggle room to plug and re drill if any one of your 176 holes is a tiny bit out of position or angle. Should be plenty strong enough, I might be tempted just to glue and clamp without dowels.

Looks like all your 'shelves' are the same height. Maybe make the bottom 4 with a bigger gap, fat bottled champagne, cava etc. sit higher in the rack. Suggest you buy bottles of each, measure and consume while finalising your design.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Alternative is to drill through middle upright first. Use the holes drilled to align the drill for holes in the outer rails - say 10mm deep. Then set a small jig on the pillar drill to consistently drill through the whole rail. Tap in dowel and plane off stub flush with rail.

Ensures all the holes for the uprights are level. Dowels won't show on the external surface, and barely visible on the internal side - largely obscured by wine bottle until consumed.

Alternatively use a contrasting dowel from the outside - once finished it becomes a feature.

Final point - 10 bottles of wine high is not a trivial weight (15-20kg?) which if supported on rails could cause the uprights to bend outwards in the middle. Is it worth having a cross brace rail half way up?

Or you could just go with the first plan!!

 

[el_Pedr0]

Suggest you buy bottles of each, measure and consume while finalising your design.

I had originally designed a bigger rack, but it's taken me so long to get round to actually making it that I've struck off a section of the design as my stash has dwindled!

Final point - 10 bottles of wine high is not a trivial weight (15-20kg?) which if supported on rails could cause the uprights to bend outwards in the middle. Is it worth having a cross brace rail half way up?

Yeah the weight is a bit of a concern. Each bottle is pretty much 1kg on the nose - maybe even by design (750ml plonk, 250g glass) for ease of counting by weight?

I'll have a think about putting in a brace. Otherwise, because this is going against a wall, I might just add a small fixing half way up the upright to screw it against the wall. Oh - and there are other modules (wine cubes & shelves) to one side which will add rigidity to that side at least.

 

[Daniel2]

If you simply drink the wine immediately, you have no issues regarding storage.

 

[johnnyb]

if I were making this I would house the rails a few mm in and cut all the housings at the same time ( whilst fixed together) it just stops the difficulties of mismatchedholes and stops making it a parallelogram. could probably dispense with the top and bottom rails. I don't know your facilities though.

 

[Richard_C]

The commercially manufactured ones often have flat metal strip diagonal bracing at the back.

 

[Simon89]

I would counterbore 10mm holes in the green bits and screw into your vertical pieces with 3.5mm screws.

Once assembled plug your 10mm holes with dowels and sand flat.

Quick. Easy repeat setup. Strong.

 

[Spectric]

With 20mm rails I would use 6 or 8mm dowels with 15mm depth, plenty strong enough as they are only subjected to a shear loading. This is an easy task but what dowel jig are you planing on using?

 

[el_Pedr0]

I'm probably going to make some sort of dowel jig to fit in/on/around a Bosch S2 drill stand that I just scored on ebay. This approach is very probably suboptimal, but I reckon with some care and proper preparation, I might be alright.

 

[Spectric]

Having used dowels for many years I can say that they only work due to the precision of the doweling jigs like Jessem and Dowelmax. Each dowel needs to be precisely located in the same position on both workpieces and perpendicular, there is no leeway for error. With my jigs I can place any number of dowels in any pattern I wish and know that I can close the joint which makes assembly easy. You only need one dowel to be wrong and getting the joint to close can be impossible and unless you have the precision getting flush faces to your workpieces is hit and miss. I know a dowel jig is not a cheap tool but it is one great investment that will open up all sorts of projects and give you the means to join so much.

 

[recipio]

No need to overthink it. I would simply screw and glue the battens before assembly of course. Using a good counterbore bit and tapered plugs they will be almost invisible. The TCT tipped sets from Wealden are very good and last a lifetime.