Dark wood dowel?

[Stuart]

Anybody know where I can source some 5mm ‘dark wood’ dowel? By dark I’m looking at sapele colour.

I only need about a foot.

 

[the bear]

You need to buy a dowel plate off Peri then you can make any size you like in any wood, if he's still making them. Lots of happy buyers on here.

Mark

 

[RogerS]

Or take the easy way

https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/hardwo ... den-dowels

Excellent quality and fast delivery

Although I've not found 5mm anywhere.

 

[Doug]

Drill a hole in a piece of steel & tap a piece of sapele through it, cut the blank to a fraction over 5mm & it will pass through with minimal force.
I’ve done this before when just wanting short bits.

 

[AndyP]

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/ac ... dowel.html

Their sapele is 6mm, sand it down perhaps.

They have 5mm in walnut.

 

[Stuart]

Thank you.

Would you believe I put sapele dowel into google and neither of those sites came up! I can’t find 5mm anywhere, even looked for a plug cutter but they’re all 6mm as well.

I’ve got plenty of small off cuts so I’ll have a go at making my own. Only need 20mm lengths (for breadboard ends) so what can go wrong?

 

[Peri]

If you find you need more, I still have a couple of plates left

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5646&start=75

 

[Doug]

I’ve got plenty of small off cuts so I’ll have a go at making my own. Only need 20mm lengths (for breadboard ends) so what can go wrong?

Funnily enough that’s exactly what I wanted small cherry dowels for on these small bread boards

 

[Dr.Al]

Another option is https://plugitwood.co.uk/collections/round-dowels

When I made the peg loom recently I needed about 8 metres of 10 mm sapele dowel and there was no way I was pushing that much through a dowel plate, so I bought some from plugitwood and it seemed very good quality (smooth finish). Lots of different woods and lots of different metric sizes.

 

[Pete Maddex]

G&S timber do dowling

https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/hardwo ... den-dowels

I have used them my self and they are very good.

Pete

 

[droogs]

Commercial doweling is turned rather than riven and therefore takes no account of the grain running through it. This makes them very weak and rather fragile as most have oblique grain rather than longditudinal grain running through them. Making dowelling yourself allows you to make dowels and pegs much better suited to being used in construction of components by being significantly less liable to snap even once in-situ due to shear stesses.

 

[droogs]

@Peri, Did you make the jig on a CNC or by drilling and then stamping in the sizes. Just had an idea when I saw your plate that If on the CNC; you could first drill some 1/2 mm holes around the circumference before drilling out the main hole and get glue channels incorporated to the plate.

 

[clogs]

look at Applebywood turnings they make all kinds...
also they sell all kinds of router n spindle moulder stuff......
they are happy to post and very helpful on the phone.....
nice people......

 

[Peri]

@Peri, Did you make the jig on a CNC or by drilling and then stamping in the sizes. Just had an idea when I saw your plate that If on the CNC; you could first drill some 1/2 mm holes around the circumference before drilling out the main hole and get glue channels incorporated to the plate.

CNC'd mate.

To be honest, I've never had the greatest of luck hammering bits of wood through them (others have though) - maybe my technique is a bit iffy, but thin dowels splinter and big dowels don't stay straight. I do mine with the 'drill' method, and that gives great results.
It's a good idea though, and wouldn't be that hard to do

EDIT: One problem - for best results I've found gradually reducing the dowel in size by making a few passes through consecutively smaller holes is the best method. If using glue channels you'd need to do the whole job in one pass, not sure how well that would go. Softwood maybe ok, hardwoods, maybe not.

 

[RogerS]

G&S timber do dowling

https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/hardwo ... den-dowels

I have used them my self and they are very good.

Pete

There's an echo in here

 

[Pete Maddex]

G&S timber do dowling

https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/hardwo ... den-dowels

I have used them my self and they are very good.

Pete

There's an echo in here

Sorry I didn’t connect tools and timber with g&s timber.

Still two recommendations they must be good.

Pete

 

[Woodbloke]

To be honest, I've never had the greatest of luck hammering bits of wood through them (others have though) - maybe my technique is a bit iffy, but thin dowels splinter and big dowels don't stay straight. I do mine with the 'drill' method, and that gives great results.
It's a good idea though, and wouldn't be that hard to do

EDIT: One problem - for best results I've found gradually reducing the dowel in size by making a few passes through consecutively smaller holes is the best method. If using glue channels you'd need to do the whole job in one pass, not sure how well that would go. Softwood maybe ok, hardwoods, maybe not.

Same here, it's a bit of an 'iffy' process and not one I do very often. The last time I had to do it in any quantity was to make a few 4mm shelf supports in very hard ebony, which seems to have a mind of it's own when going through a dowel plate. I started off with a blank of mild steel and drilled loads of holes decreasing in size by 0.1mm each time. Even so, I guess I lost half of them; bent, mangled or otherwise unusable. To prep the square blanks, I also planed the corners off in a simple jig to form a rough octagon - Rob

 

[RogerS]

G&S timber do dowling

https://www.toolsandtimber.co.uk/hardwo ... den-dowels

I have used them my self and they are very good.

Pete

There's an echo in here

Sorry I didn’t connect tools and timber with g&s timber.

Still two recommendations they must be good.

Pete

They certainly are and not that far away from me. Excellent selection of turning and carving tools.