Dowels

[ldoodle]

Hey,

Can you buy proper dowels in long lengths and bigger diameters? I just made a rustic bench out of some scrap sleepers and ended up making 100mm (square) dowels, with 50mm going into each piece. That meant making 50mm deep square holes!

Great little project to practice fine chisel work. Don't think 8mm x 40mm dowels would have done the job keeping the legs on. I didn't have enough length on the scraps for legs to make a proper tenon.

This is the closest I could find, but it's not slitted like dowels so no escape for excess glue: http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homeba...dowel-decorative-moulding---35-x-240cm-148038

I am a hobbyist, so don't have a router or anything like that!

Thanks.

 

[Mr Chibs]

As you are a hobbyist... What about broom handles and gorilla glue?
You wouldn't need routed sides then.

Or perhaps angle grind the route lines, if you don't want smooth dowels

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Can you buy proper dowels in long lengths and bigger diameters? I just made a rustic bench out of some scrap sleepers and ended up making 100mm (square) dowels, with 50mm going into each piece. That meant making 50mm deep square holes!

Commercially available dowels (the fluted variety) come in diameters up to 16mm AFAIK, however, the only species you seem to see them in is beech. Beech is completely unsuitable for exterior joinery as it blackens and rots in continual contact with damp (even when inside pieces). As Mr.Chibs says, broom handle is one approach, although if you are bent on accurate hardwood or softwood dowelling for which you can source a matching drill bit, then I'd recommend Appleby Woodturnings as the place to go, but they aren't that cheap. I believe small quantities are available from their eBay shop. For anyone interested they also sell tapered plugs in a variety of sizes and species - ideal for renovation work where sparkies have treated ancient panelling to that "Gruyere cheese" look so beloved of our electric string wielding bretheren. To add a groove to relieve glue pressure a simple tool with a nail to run grooves up the sides of the dowel is easily made

BTW, minor point, but when a round "peg" becomes a square, parallel one and goes into a square chiselled hole there is a tendency amongst professional wood butchers to refer to that as a "loose tenon mortise and tenon joint". Just saying..... I use loose tenons and splines in grooves cut using a router with a straight cutter. This is a fairly well established approach in repair works