My morning project

[cathead]

Having watched a bunch of you tube videos on building a dowel maker, it was time to attempt one myself.
One looked interesting and very similar to my build but I used a piece of an old lawn mower blade since
that would be better than the mild steel one on You-Tube. I went with three small sizes 3/16, 1/4, and 5/16 inch
sizes which fit my immediate needs. After making the tool, I welded on a handle so it can be easily mounded
in a vise and used with my Milwaukee M-18 drill.







This is the finished POTD along with the remains of the mower blade.





I did drill all the holes one drill size bigger as the dowels were coming out a little narrow, much better after
that.




Yes, the caliper reads pretty close here but there is a bit more variation over the reading but
good enough for pinning together some pieces of wood.


I'm enjoying the wood working aspect but the dust is beginning to show on my machines
and I don't want to get too serious and have to get an expensive dust collection system.


It looks like we will be getting enough snow to cover the ground up here tonight so time to
pick up a few things in the yard and cover the wood pile.

Have a good day!

 

[francist]

Nice, I like that. What's the purpose of the clover leaf of smaller holes around the edge? Does it create a glue channel or some other reason that's not evident to me? I have a similar plate I made many, many moons ago out of regular cold-rolled bar (1/4" thick) and it's still going strong but it doesn't have anything fancy about the holes. It works ok for making pegs of the matching wood species to the main project.

-frank

 

[cathead]

Nice, I like that. What's the purpose of the clover leaf of smaller holes around the edge? Does it create a glue channel or some other reason that's not evident to me? I have a similar plate I made many, many moons ago out of regular cold-rolled bar (1/4" thick) and it's still going strong but it doesn't have anything fancy about the holes. It works ok for making pegs of the matching wood species to the main project.

-frank

Frank,

It creates some sharp edges that cut a lot of the excess material away. At least that is what I think
it does. It seems to work better than the previous method that used a small angled planer blade mounted on wood.
I didn't spend a lot of time on getting it set up perfectly though.