13mm dowelling?

Alun

Anyone know if it's possible to get 13mm dowelling? I've seen 12mm (also sold as 1/2"), 14mm (also sold as 5/8") and even 15mm, but not 13mm! The size is critical as it's to fit some bottle stopper bungs that I have, and I'm fed up turning the 13mm shaft for the bottle stoppers every time and want to take a bit of a shortcut by pre-drilling the blanks and gluing a short length of dowel in first. I'm possibly going to be making a large number of these soon, so any time I can save is good.

BTW, I've scoured the Axminster catalogue and although they don't sell the stuff either, they have a thing called a dowel plate, which I assume can be used to make dowels, but it's not obvious to me how you'd actually use such a thing. Any ideas? See here.

JoeB-

Hi

There's a review of the dowel plate on the lie-nielsen website.... (review as PDF file at bottom of page)

http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?sku=DP

I think the dowels are simply forced through the holes in the plate and that's it! The review mentions that many furniture restorers may have to make their own dowels in custom sizes, they tend to simply make their own dowel plates by drilling an appropriate sized hole in steel or whatever... maybe you could drill a 12.9mm or a 13.1 mm hole or whatever in your own piece of strong metal and try to force 14mm (fluted) dowels through.... (the lie-nielsen dowel plate doesn't have 13mm on it). Axminster sell 14mm dowels in one meter lengths.

Hope this helps
Joe

Alun

Thanks for that Joe. I hadn't spotted that it was a Lie-Nielsen tool, because if I had, I'd have thought to look on their website myself! They do some beautiful tools, especially their planes. I spent a lot of time at their stand at the last Axminster show, admiring their stuff. Now, I'm not really into "flat work" myself, but I'd be tempted to buy one of their planes just to put up on a shelf in the house as an ornament

I'll see if I can drag up a bit of steel from somewhere and drill a 13mm hole in it, although I can see the whole process not saving me much time in the end, since it looks like I'd have to have fairly short lengths of dowel to knock through the plate plus I'd have to taper each piece first.

I once saw someone making these bottle stoppers who used an old 13mm spanner that he'd put a sharpened edge onto to quickly and roughly produce the shafts. Maybe I'll give that a try first.

JoeB-

Wood Mouldings in Rathnew, Wicklow

http://www.woodmouldings.com

sell 13mm dowel rod... in eight foot lenghts, probably have minimum order quantities as well...

Joe

Alun

Thanks Joe! That's great. I'm not sure whether they sell to the "end user", but they have a couple of sales outlets here in Bray which I can check out.

Alun

Alun wrote:

Thanks Joe! That's great. I'm not sure whether they sell to the "end user", but they have a couple of sales outlets here in Bray which I can check out.

Well I was in Dun Laoghaire today and popped into IBS who are listed as stockists of WoodMouldings, and bought a lenghth of (supposedly) 13mm dowelling. Got it home and it's a) slightly oval instead of round and the diamater is actually closer to 12mm !!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I give up.

JoeB-

sorry to be dragging up this old thread but I have just come across a jig for dowel making...

It uses a hand held drill and a router to produce the dowels, probably not worth it for you Alun but it may help other people who find this thread.
Info at http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=53

Another thing is I was reading Joyce's book, Techniques of Furniture Making and apparently dowel plates are used to correct dowels that may have changed size due to storage... i.e oversize dowels are knocked through before use... however that guy pays some incredible attention to detail... his work is immaculate and so his methods may be too much for us mere mortals.

He also recommends making the dowel plates by drilling a COUNTERSUNK hole of the correct size on the UNDERSIDE of the plate... it makes sense really...

Cheers