Making Dowels

I needed some dowels to finish up my bench hooks.  I have a few lumber yard/hardware store dowels in different sizes but they are not very round or very accurately sized.  I also don't know what species of wood they are made from.

Making your own dowels is great if you want to match them with the wood in your project.  In the past I have turned them on the lathe.  It works but it's slow going sneaking up on the correct size and it's easy to screw them up.

I considered ordering a dowel plate from Lie-Nielson or Lee Valley but they are kind of pricey and, since you drive the wood through them with a hammer, are only good for making relatively short dowels.  I had previously seen some DIY dowel makers online and decided to spend some time researching the matter.  There were a number of different takes that were interesting but the one that Izzy Swan made seemed like the best of everything.  It seemed easy to build and could cut long dowels in just about any type of wood species.

I had a piece of 3/8-inch thick 1018 cold rolled steel that was the perfect size for this.  I laid it out for every common size dowel that I should ever need and one or two I may never need.

Beginnings of a dowel maker.

I scribed layout lines where I would drill my holes then marked them with a center punch and drilled through with an 1/8-inch bit.  Then I proceeded to drill the actual sizes from 3/16 to 1/2 in 1/16-inch increments.  I drilled the smaller holes at about 940 RPM and the larger ones at 380 RPM.

Dremel style cut off wheels.

I had two different diameter cut off wheels.  I used the smaller one on the three smallest holes and the large one on the rest.  I cut slots across the holes every 45-degrees to create kind of a star pattern between a 1/16 and 1/8-inch deep at the edge of the holes tapering to nothing as it led away from the hole.

Star pattern on three of the holes.

I had some small strips of birch and decided to try it in the 3/8 hole.  I ripped the material on the table saw to near 3/8 square.  I sharpened one end on the disc sander so it would start in the plate and roughly rounded the other end to fit in my drill.  I started running it through the plate but it was going really slow and starting to burn the wood.  Then I recalled Izzy saying that the material needed to be very close to final size for this to work well.  I ran the blank through the 1/2-inch then the 7/16-inch holes to get it closer to size.  It went through both of them fairly easily since it was really just taking off the corners.  It was a little more difficult in the 3/8 hole since it was taking a full round cut but it went through better than before.

I thought I would try modifying the 3/8 hole by filing some clearance angle on the back of the slots.  I used a diamond needle file for that.  I really couldn't tell much difference in the way it cut compared to before so I abandoned the idea.

Clearance angle filed in lower right hole.

  After making and measuring the first dowel, I could see that they were just a few thousands oversize.  A little sanding had them down to size.  They were a perfect fit in a hole drilled with the bit I had used to make the dowel plate.  Unfortunately, I sometimes use Forstner bits and mine seem to drill about .008 to .010 oversize.  To allow for this, I turned the plate over and re-drilled the holes 1/64-inch oversize.  Now I can just sand the dowels to fit whichever drill I happen to be using for a project.  I didn't have a 33/64 drill so the 1/2-inch hole is not oversize.

Finished plate and some sample birch dowels.

This project was definitely a success.  After a little sanding, these dowels look as good or better than anything I can buy and in any wood species I want.