I want to be able to produce shop made dowel pins out of any wood that I wish. Additionally, I want to be able to make my pins with good grain orientation. I purchased a dowel plate from Lie-Nielsen.
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To make it easy to pound stock through the plate I decided to attach it to a block of hard maple. I milled a piece down from some 12/4 hard maple my brother Tom recently brought me from Virginia. |
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| I laid out the plate outline and dowel holes onto the block leaving ample room at each end to be able to clamp the block down easily. |
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I decided to use a recently refurbished Stanley brace with some recycled old auger bits and a few "new old stock" Jennings Pattern bits that I just found at Tools for Working Wood. Here I am using a 3/4 Jennings. The largest hole on the plate is 5/8 so I was creating a slightly oversized hole for easy dowel management. |
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Here is the first hole...I put tape on the bit as a depth gauge and had a sacrificial board under the maple to minimize blow out. I struggled a bit to keep the bit straight. It was also difficult to get leverage onto the brace at the bench height.
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So I got up on a stool...leverage was better
and I used a square to help me stay lined up...I am going to need lots
of practice before I master this method. |
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I did all of the holes oversized except
the 1/2 hole. I did not have an auger bit that was appropriate. |
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So when I screwed down the plate I made
sure that the 1/2 inch lined up perfectly before I tightend the unit
down. |
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The finished product. Should be ready for some serious pounding.
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