# What do you think about this dowelling jig?



## bclarknc (Feb 28, 2012)

I've been looking at this dowel jig for a while now and thinking it's a good deal. The engineering behind it seems impressive to me and the cost is even better. I can't post URL's yet but if you go to eBay and search 

"Matching Four Hole Doweling Jig Drill Guide Wood Dowel" 
you will be able to find it easily.

Thanks


----------



## bobj3 (Jan 17, 2006)

Hi Brett

I think Otis has one and he likes his but he called it edge to edge dowel jig
Router Forums - View Single Post - Festool Domino?

http://woodworker.com/double-edge-to-edge-dowel-jig-mssu-100-131.asp

Matching Four Hole Doweling Jig Drill Guide Wood Dowel | eBay
Matching Four Hole Doweling Jig Drill Guide Wood Dowel - Garden - Shopping.com

===



bclarknc said:


> I've been looking at this dowel jig for a while now and thinking it's a good deal. The engineering behind it seems impressive to me and the cost is even better. I can't post URL's yet but if you go to eBay and search
> 
> "Matching Four Hole Doweling Jig Drill Guide Wood Dowel"
> you will be able to find it easily.
> ...


----------



## Slomoe (Feb 14, 2011)

Dowel Max makes the best one, but very expensive. You can buy the same long drill guides from HF Wilson for $2.37 ea. and make your own. The guides are interchangeable as they are all threaded 1/2-20. $39 you can get 5 of each size 1/4-5/16-3/8 put them in your own alum. bar and you can order all the alum from online metals. 
I looked up the one on Ebay. It has 10 pivot points and it is a casting. Looks good but as a machinist I see 10 places to wear and/or loose accuracy. If you're putting a face frame together, I would want my joints to be absolutely flush, not have to sand every one flush and then deal with any sanding marks across the grain that will show up when you stain the part. 
You get what you pay for. Chinese is cheap - but that's all.


----------



## bclarknc (Feb 28, 2012)

Sure the Dowel Max looks great. But I am not a professional nor am making money on my woodworking, hopefully that will change in the future. Mostly, I need a doweling jig that actually works and will make good size dowels. I bought one of these from Lowes Shop General Tools & Instruments Pro Doweling Jig Kit at Lowes.com
but after reading all the terrible reviews I returned it. I'm just kind of stuck here trying to find a jig that works and will fit my budget. Not one that costs as much as an entry-level contractors table saw.


----------



## darsev (Feb 3, 2012)

bclarknc said:


> I'm just kind of stuck here trying to find a jig that works and will fit my budget. Not one that costs as much as an entry-level contractors table saw.


Brett, I don't use a jig as such. I have some marker pins that I use instead. They are hard to describe without a photo, and I don't have one handy. What I do is to drill the hole(s) on one piece first. Then put the marker pins into the holes just drilled. They are basically a small cylinder that slides into the hole, with a point sticking out the other end. Put that piece face down on flat table. Put the second piece also face down and slide it up to the first in the same way that you want the joined. Push hard, and the pins make a clear indent on the second piece where you need to drill the corresponding hole. Very simple, and there are no move parts etc. to get sloppy and inaccurate. Best of all is that it cost me about $8-10 for a set of four and a matching brad point drill. You can't argue with that price.

I used them when making the laminate for the coffee table in the photo. I used a combination of dowels and biscuits for the laminate depending on the shape of the pieces being joined.

Darryl


----------



## CharleyL (Feb 28, 2009)

Welcome to Router Forums.


I don't like to use dowels very much. Without expensive jigs like the Dowel Max it is difficult to drill precisely spaced and aligned holes for multiple dowel joints in a home shop. It is much easier to use them in a factory environment with production machinery that is designed to drill multiple dowel holes at the same time. 

You need to not only drill a perfectly aligned dowel hole, but multiple dowel holes must be perfectly spaced to each other to make multiple dowel joints, and this becomes a problem for the simpler, less expensive dowel jigs. A fairly good dowel jig which is considerably less expensive than the Dowel Max is the Dowl-It jig and I do own one of these. It is self centering on the stock, which is great for most joints, but if you want your dowels off center you must shim the clamp to get the result that you want. Replaceable drill bushings in the deluxe model allow for drilling different diameter dowel holes and you can drill these holes on several standard spacings. To drill the mating holes in the second piece requires the use of Dowel Center Transfer Plugs and careful alignment of the Dowl-It jig to get good results. If the second piece is wider and you want the dowel holes to be off center on the piece the Dowl-It becomes difficult to use as shims are required to move it to the off center location. Although I own a Dowl-It jig, I don't use dowels very much because of these difficulties in using them. 

I prefer instead to use biscuits, mortise and tenon joints or floating tenon joints. Biscuits are easy to align, fast to install, and very forgiving when it comes to positioning. For tenon jigs there are several low cost jigs available that are easy to use. The Deluxe Beadlock floating tenon system lets you install floating tenon mortises using only the jig, a clamp, and a powered hand drill with the correct bit. The only real downside to them is that you must purchase the fluted tenon stock from Beadlock or buy an expensive fluting router bit to make your own fluted tenon stock. The Mortise Pal is another jig that allows you to make mortises for floating tenons using a router equipped with a collar bushing and a straight bit. Floating tenon stock can easily be made for this on the table saw. Although the router leaves rounded ends in the mortises, square tenons that will fit properly in the mortises leaving the 1/2 round ends of the mortises open work very well. These 1/2 round spaces are great to contain and hold any excess glue.

Charley


----------



## bclarknc (Feb 28, 2012)

Thanks guys.

@Darsev...I do know about marking pins, I have done it this way too, but in the past have done it by hand and still would have to unless they were smaller pieces, and they just don't come out great. A drill guide would help I guess.

@CharleyL...I have seen the Dowel-it and that was what I was going to order. This guy, who you probably have seen his webpage, shows a lot of mods you can do with it Using a self centreing dowel jig

I prefer biscuits too, maybe I should instead spend my money there. The beadlock system is nice and I would like to have it, but seems too expensive now considering you have to buy their tenons. May have to look at the Mortise Pal, I do have the Delta Mortising Kit that I have asked if I should keep or return on this post: http://www.routerforums.com/jigs-fi...paign=Feed:+routerforums/VkVj+(Router+Forums)


----------



## Bradleytavares (Feb 25, 2012)

Double Dowel It is a great self centering dowel jig. I don't remember the cost but it was quite reasonable. Bits and reducers easily available from same mfgr. Used this for years 'till biscuts became affordable. I'd direct you to buscuts unless you have a use specific need. Line boaring along a long edge is only as good as your measuring system when edge joining two long pieces with multipule dowels


----------



## bclarknc (Feb 28, 2012)

Bradleytavares said:


> Double Dowel It is a great self centering dowel jig. I don't remember the cost but it was quite reasonable. Bits and reducers easily available from same mfgr. Used this for years 'till biscuts became affordable. I'd direct you to buscuts unless you have a use specific need. Line boaring along a long edge is only as good as your measuring system when edge joining two long pieces with multipule dowels


I'm up to suggestions for biscuits, I like using them but can't afford the nicer biscuit joiners. There's some on ebay I've been looking at that are cheap china made ones, I actually ordered a similar one in the past but there was something I didn't like about it. Something like if you had it sitting on a table flush with the bottom of the board, it placed the biscuit too close to the bottom. I was taught to use the table before hanging it from the adjustable fence. Not sure the details, but it was something like that. 

There are just some applications where I'd like to use dowels right now to get me by till I can afford a biscuit joiner.


----------



## darsev (Feb 3, 2012)

bclarknc said:


> I'm up to suggestions for biscuits, I like using them but can't afford the nicer biscuit joiners. There's some on ebay I've been looking at that are cheap china made ones, I actually ordered a similar one in the past but there was something I didn't like about it. Something like if you had it sitting on a table flush with the bottom of the board, it placed the biscuit too close to the bottom. I was taught to use the table before hanging it from the adjustable fence. Not sure the details, but it was something like that.
> 
> There are just some applications where I'd like to use dowels right now to get me by till I can afford a biscuit joiner.


Brett,

There are some slot cutters you can get for your router that do the same job as a biscuiter. When all is said and done, a biscuiter is only a specialised router that does only one job - biscuiting. This means it is more reliable as the setup is always done, but if you buy a slot cutter of the same size as a biscuit, then your router will do the same job. A slot cutter for you router has to be a lot cheaper than a whole biscuiter.

Personally I prefer dowels over biscuits where there is the option. Dowels go deeper into the board giving mechanical strength to the joint to support the glue. Biscuiting though is well proven technology and in both cases it is the gluing that is more important to the strength of the joint.

Darryl


----------



## CharleyL (Feb 28, 2009)

I don't want to start a long discussion about doweling vs, biscuits, vs methods but here is my opinion of biscuit joinery. I almost never use dowels anymore. The biggest reason for going away from dowels and switching to biscuits is speed and accuracy. Dowels work fine but are too time consuming and achieving accuracy in multi-dowel joints is nearly impossible without expensive tooling.

A biscuit joiner is nothing more than a right angle grinder with a saw blade attached that is mounted in a spring loaded sliding case. Making it work well requires it to have an accurate and easily adjustable fence, alignment markers, etc. so that you can quickly and easily make biscuit slots that are in exactly the right location and the right depth. If the biscuit joiner moves or the blade is not true while the cut is being made it will widen the cut and will destroy the accuracy and benefit of the biscuit slot. 

Yes, you can make biscuit slots with router bits and cheap biscuit joiners, but you won't achieve the speed and repeatable accuracy of the better quality biscuit joiners with their easy setting precision fences, etc. You get what you pay for. Biscuits have their greatest benefit when they can be quickly and accurately installed easily. If your method of cutting biscuit slots requires a whole lot of fussing and setup to make them, then you are no further ahead than using dowels or one of the other joining methods that are available. 

I rely mostly on glue to hold my joints together, using biscuits mostly for joint alignment. As such, I don't apply glue to the biscuits, only to the board surfaces. Good alignment requires accurate biscuit slots. I have owned 4 biscuit joiners since they first became available and have given away the first three. My latest, and best so far, is a 6 year old DeWalt 682K series. There are other good ones, but none of these good ones are cheap, but they are still way cheaper than a Dowel Max.

Charley


----------

