Here's what I made:
There were 7 altogether, but the other pair were in the house when I took the photo.
These were made to hold oak curtain poles, and you'll see why they are the other way up to normal brackets when you see the in situ photos later. The poles involved a certain amount of hand-work, roughing down from the square to an octagon with a draw knife then a plane:
And then to 16 sided just with a block plane (the other hand holding the work):
The trick with the dowel making jig is to be shaving off small and regular shavings, rather than taking a little then a lot:
There's still a little bit of cleaning up work to do:
.....and then sanding.
The weak link in this set-up is the drill. For a start, it gets extremely hot. I takes quite a while to do each pole (there were three), and it has to turn at a fairly low speed, which makes it labour. And then there is the connection between the pole and the drill:
That was the longest pole. Luckily, each pole was substantially over-length to start with, but clearly I had to find an alternative to spinning the pole with a drill. I came up with this:
It's just a temporary handle allowing me to turn the pole though the device by hand. Two things resulted: A/ a round but not so smooth pole after an hour's work, and B/ forearms like Popeye.
After varnishing the poles, and drilling the screw holes in the brackets, it was just a question of fixing them in place and hanging the curtains. Now you can see why the brackets hang down from above rather than being below the level of the poles as per normal. Finials will happen when my friend gets a lathe:
I was quoted £178 +VAT to have those 7 brackets made. I'm really pleased about that now, because it has forced me into doing something which proved to be great fun, and definitely practical for a hobbiest with a shed.