# Cutting Down a Oak dowel



## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I need to cut down an oak dowel 5/8 to fit in a 5/8 hole. They do not seem to make a 9/16 version. I tried sanding on it outside for about 15 minutes with not making progress. I finally put my belt sander in my vise upside down and it worked pretty fast but there was dust everywhere. Can you think of an easy way to do this without making a lot of dust? I do not have a lathe. I was thinking maybe a piece of curved broken glass would work but I have not tried it. What do you think?


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

spoke shave would be the safest and easiest...
mage a scraper to do it in place of a spoke shave...
forget the glass idea unless you like stitches...


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## 163481 (Jul 8, 2015)

It was either Matthias Wandel or Marius Hornberger on Youtube who had a video of a dowel maker. Basically, it was a flat chisel clamped to a jig, the inside hole of which was at the finished diameter while the outside hole accommodated the larger stock. The larger piece was chucked into a cordless drill and fed into the jig. The shavings, IIRC, were more like from a lathe and less like a sander.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Sounds like a couple of good ideas. Would the spoke shave need to be curved? My dad had one but I did not end up with it. I will work on this as I need to make a half dozen or more. I will try to find the video for the jig.


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## schnewj (Nov 18, 2013)

Get a piece of steel flat stock. Drill the diameter hole that you need. Clamp the steel into a vice or screw it to a table. Chuck up the dowel in a hand drill (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). Taper the other end slightly, and start it into the hole in the plate. On a slow speed spin the dowel as you feed it through the hole in the plate. The sharp edge of the hole will start shaving the dowel and it will size down to the diameter that you need.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

All these great ideas. I new there was an easier way than making a cloud of dust.


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## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

If you have good dust collection on your router, you can roll the dowel over a straight bit. There are a bunch of videos on router table "turning". Here's one on custom dowels, you could do this by hand without the drill for a larger dowel.






another, using the table saw instead

https://youtu.be/tIpOmjkW400


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

schnewj said:


> Get a piece of steel flat stock. Drill the diameter hole that you need. Clamp the steel into a vice or screw it to a table. Chuck up the dowel in a hand drill (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). Taper the other end slightly, and start it into the hole in the plate. On a slow speed spin the dowel as you feed it through the hole in the plate. The sharp edge of the hole will start shaving the dowel and it will size down to the diameter that you need.


two reductions come out cleaner on that...


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## Nickp (Dec 4, 2012)

schnewj said:


> Get a piece of steel flat stock. Drill the diameter hole that you need. Clamp the steel into a vice or screw it to a table. Chuck up the dowel in a hand drill (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). Taper the other end slightly, and start it into the hole in the plate. On a slow speed spin the dowel as you feed it through the hole in the plate. The sharp edge of the hole will start shaving the dowel and it will size down to the diameter that you need.


...and if a drill is not available, a hammer will surely do the same...it would be good to have something underneath to keep the piece centered...

...just adding...


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

Nickp said:


> ...and if a drill is not available, a hammer will surely do the same...it would be good to have something underneath to keep the piece centered...
> 
> ...just adding...


ditto on the hammer...


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## Fraise (May 19, 2012)

Lie Neilson make these plates. They turn out lovely dowels. You can make the dowel over length and chamfer the end as a leadin or even cutting a little slot in one side gives a bit of lee way (lie way in this case?)


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

plan X(?)...

router table and a 9/16 half round...
seems everybody has them...

Half Round Bit for 1-1/8 Material, 1/2 Shank, Whiteside 1434A


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## Nickp (Dec 4, 2012)

Lee...a thought just occurred to me as I re read your post...do you need to cut 5/8" from what you're starting with to get it down to 5/8"...like starting with a closet pole to end at 5/8...

If so, I would rather suggest going out and buying what you need...


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

did a search for* 9/16 and 5/8 oak wooden dowel rod *and they are out there...


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## mgmine (Jan 16, 2012)

How many of these do you have to make? It might be quicker to clean up the dust than to monkey around trying to make a few using some other method than your belt sander.


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## ksidwy (Jul 13, 2013)

Here below another great video(Izzy Swan How to make a dowel - simple method). I hope it helps. Sid


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I have made progress. I found a piece of scrap 3/16 steel around. I cleaned it up with a wire brush on my bench grinder. I have drilled a 5/8 inch hole as seen in the picture. I then cut some small notches in the steel plate around the hole with my cut off saw. I now have a dowel forming jig which I will save in my tool box. The jig is plenty big enough to add more sizes as I need them.
This jig worked very well. I would recommend to anybody as there was no mess no fuss. Using the belt sander had me breathing all kinds of small wood dust.

I have ordered a spoke shave off eBay for $10.50 just incase something else crops up.


I can't seem to up load pictures. I have before. Is this a windows 10 thing or operator error? I am trying to drag and drop and I get the little red circle with the line across it saying no. Has anybody up loaded pictures with windows 10?


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## ansel (Nov 26, 2013)

There is a Youtube video of a guy making bench dogs from dowel stock, and he used a hand plane to reduce the circumference of the dowel to fit in his bench. He makes it look pretty simple. Search for "Make bench dogs Marty Backe". Hope it works for your application.


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## DaninVan (Jan 1, 2012)

" (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). "
-Bill

Lol! I'm pretty sure that's the original objective...the paring down part.


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## schnewj (Nov 18, 2013)

DaninVan said:


> " (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). "
> -Bill
> 
> Lol! I'm pretty sure that's the original objective...the paring down part.


Cute, Dan, Cute!:wink:


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

You do need to pare down the dowel to fit in my 1/2 chuck of my of drill. I wish my drill had a 5/8 chuck. The fit after using my jig is much better than trying to belt sand the dowel. The belt sander leaves spots whereas the turned down dowel fits like a glove, a perfect fit Turning down the dowel is a much better way to go in my opinion and less messy as you end up with bigger pieces of wood and no dust. I ran my drill at a low speed and there is no dust.

I will post pictures if I can figure it out with windows 10.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I had to go into advanced mode to upload these pictures. So here they are.


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## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

coxhaus said:


> I will post pictures if I can figure it out with windows 10.


This is what I had to do. 

Open RF normally. 

Click the "3 dots" menu and select "open with Internet Explorer"

Everything works normally after that.

You can also set the default settings to change the default browser back to Internet Explorer.

You do that by clicking the "notifications" icon in the lower right corner. Then click "all settings", "system", "default apps". You can then choose whatever browser you want.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I am having technical difficulties. The picture is upside down. It looks right on my computer. I decided to save the image upside down on my computer and then reupload it to see if it would be right side up but it did not work. The picture is still upside down.


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## Mike (Nov 22, 2004)

Nobody has asked these questions so far and I feel I have to.

Lee, can you enlarge the hole the dowel will fit into?

Could you drill a hole in the end of the oak dowel and insert a smaller dowel in it? Say a 1/2"?


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## tomp913 (Mar 7, 2014)

I had to make a tenon in the end of a piece of closet rod so I could glue it into the edge of a 2x4. I took a block of wood, drilled a 1-1/4" hole and clamped it against the fence on the router table so that the center of the rod was over the bit. With a 3/4" straight bit, I raised it until the bit was just cutting the dowel and fed the dowel until it hit a block that set the tenon length, spinning the dowel as I advanced it. Pulled the dowel back until it cleared the bit, raised it up and repeated, taking light cuts every time. Kept going until I had the end turned down to 3/4".


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Mike said:


> Nobody has asked these questions so far and I feel I have to.
> 
> Lee, can you enlarge the hole the dowel will fit into?
> 
> Could you drill a hole in the end of the oak dowel and insert a smaller dowel in it? Say a 1/2"?


If I had thought of it I could just added a 1/2 inch dowel on the end of the 5/8 and not pared anything down.

Sure wish I could fix my orientation of my pictures. I can't them to rotate.


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## Nickp (Dec 4, 2012)

DaninVan said:


> " (you may have to pare it down to fit a 3/8 chuck (or 1/2"). "
> -Bill
> 
> Lol! I'm pretty sure that's the original objective...the paring down part.


Let's see...chicken...egg..chicken...egg...we know what you meant, Dan... And that we knew is the real scary part...


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## Stick486 (Jan 4, 2013)

Nickp said:


> Let's see...chicken...egg..chicken...egg...we know what you meant, Dan... And that we knew is the real scary part...


we did but did Dan....


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Even paring down once is a lot better than 6 or 7 times. The jig saved all of that and built a better fitting product. Don't sand the dowel down build a jig. In the end you will be happier.


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## boogalee (Nov 24, 2010)

Hi Lee

Here are your images.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Thanks.
Lee


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