dowels for motise and tenons

[ucoulddoit]

Dowel plates:

https://www.classichandtools.com/acatalog/Miller-Dowel.html

 

Cheaper ones are available!

 

I have one of these Lie Neilson plates but find the step of 2mm between holes too big and small diameter dowels are easily snapped when being driven through with a hammer. If I need really precise dowels, I use my homemade mild steel plate to form the dowel to within a millimetre or so, then finish off with the Lie Neilson plate.

 

Looking back to the start of this thread, I'd assumed it is smallish diameter dowels for furniture rather than a building frame? But if it is a frame, larger dowels can be made with a single hole in a plate as Alec suggested as they are much less likely to snap when driven hard with a hammer through the hole. Or you can hammer them through a steel tube. For a small frame I made, I found several places selling 'dowels' for green oak frames, and most were selling octagonal rather than round dowels. So I made my own 20mm octagonal dowels from dry straight grained oak on the table saw and router table. About 75 in a short afternoon which worked out well.

 

Andrew

[jamesd]

Thanks for all the help guys, I'm leaning towards making myself a plate out of steel or buying one of these:

Veritas Dowel Former - Dowel Cutters - Pocket Hole Joinery & Dowelling - Drilling - Power Tool Accessories - Accessories | Axminster Tools & Machinery

[jamesd]

Thought i'd pop up a couple of images of what the pegs are going to be used for. I'm not sure whther to use 10 or 12mm pegs though, there is less room the 12mm pegs to be used, but they will less likely to break as i drive them in.

I'm doing drawboard mortise and tenons to make sure i get a snug fit as well.

As you can see in the picture there will be two pegs for the long stretcher (the two lines show the thickness of the peg) and 1 peg for the shorter stretcher (the circle in pencil on the leg)

The first photo shows 10mm pegs, the second is the 12mm. Although there isn't a lot of difference using 12mm pegs would leave a lot of room for error.

For reference the width of the tennon is 90mm.

So in that 90mm three 12mm pegs would have to go through the leg. Would using the 12mm pegs reduce the strength in the leg too much?

 

Apologies for the long post and strange questions, I've got this far and don't want to muck it up when i put it all together!!!

[agg221]

I wouldn't want to drawbore in something that fine.

 

Have you cut all slots yet? If you have only cut the slots one way (for the long stretchers) I would be inclined to take them right through and then locate the slots for the short stretchers above them, again right through. That way, you can put your pegs pretty much in the middle of the face and use a couple of 16mm pegs in each joint. If you cut the tenons slightly long, you can trim the ends off once pegged.

 

If you have already cut the stretcher mortices both ways, or your stretchers are too short to do as above, I would go with 10mm pegs but not drawbore them in. 10mm will be quite fragile so I would do as Andrew suggests and make a plate with 13mm to 10mm holes in 0.5mm increments.

 

When making pegs through a dowel plate, don't worry if a bit rips off the face of the peg every now and again - they will work fine and it won't show at all so long as most of the material is still there around the full circle at the end points.

 

If you are drawboring, you will need to taper the peg quite heavily on one side to get it in - you may need to be as much as 3" over length - 2" extra to drive in and 1" to get chewed up by the mallet and sawn off neatly.

 

Alec

[Jamespepperpot]

I did some drawboring joints on the last desk I made. If I remember correctly I did 9mm pegs made by driving a 10x10mm square of straight grained oak through a plate with a hole drilled in it. I cut the hole through without anything under it so it burred over and knocked them through on the burred side which helped cut them into pegs.

Drawboring is really time consuming but it makes a very solid mortise and tenon joint.

[jamesd]

I wouldn't want to drawbore in something that fine.

 

Have you cut all slots yet? If you have only cut the slots one way (for the long stretchers) I would be inclined to take them right through and then locate the slots for the short stretchers above them, again right through. That way, you can put your pegs pretty much in the middle of the face and use a couple of 16mm pegs in each joint. If you cut the tenons slightly long, you can trim the ends off once pegged.

 

If you have already cut the stretcher mortices both ways, or your stretchers are too short to do as above, I would go with 10mm pegs but not drawbore them in. 10mm will be quite fragile so I would do as Andrew suggests and make a plate with 13mm to 10mm holes in 0.5mm increments.

 

When making pegs through a dowel plate, don't worry if a bit rips off the face of the peg every now and again - they will work fine and it won't show at all so long as most of the material is still there around the full circle at the end points.

 

If you are drawboring, you will need to taper the peg quite heavily on one side to get it in - you may need to be as much as 3" over length - 2" extra to drive in and 1" to get chewed up by the mallet and sawn off neatly.

 

Alec

 

I presume by "something that fine" you mean a smaller piece of work? the legs are 4inches by 4inches so i thought they were quite large.

 

I have already cut all the mortises in the legs so the stretchers meet inside at 45degrees. There was a reason for this, i want all the stretchers on the same level so can build a shelf on top of them.

 

I'm still not sure i will drawboard the joints, as i am a bit worried about breaking a dowel, I might drawboard them but only by a tiny bit (i.e 1 or 2 millimetres).

All i know i want is a strong joint at the end of it so the stretchers are kept tight to the legs, the wood is still a bit green as its only a year old (its Beech btw)

Would not drawboarding the joint make any difference to how strong/tight the joint will be in the future?

 

I will go down the route of using a plate to make my dowels as this seems to be a good way to make them.

 

Any other words of wisdom for me before i decide? ps thanks for your advice!

[jamesd]

I did some drawboring joints on the last desk I made. If I remember correctly I did 9mm pegs made by driving a 10x10mm square of straight grained oak through a plate with a hole drilled in it. I cut the hole through without anything under it so it burred over and knocked them through on the burred side which helped cut them into pegs.

Drawboring is really time consuming but it makes a very solid mortise and tenon joint.

 

Thanks for the pictures. How much offset did you give the holes on the tenons for drawboarding?

You used smaller dowels than i am intending on using, did you go right through other side of the leg with the peg? did you have any pegs break on you?

[Jamespepperpot]

Thanks for the pictures. How much offset did you give the holes on the tenons for drawboarding?

You used smaller dowels than i am intending on using, did you go right through other side of the leg with the peg? did you have any pegs break on you?

 

I did a 2mm offset which seemed to work pretty well. No I went all the way through one side of the mortise, the tenon and then half way through the other side of the mortise. I did 16 drawboring joints in that desk and only broke 2 pegs which was probably my fault as I was using a round carvers mallet to knock them in and I think I may have hit the top of the peg out of square and snapped it.

An article I read before I did them has some really interesting pictures including a cross section of a drawbored joint.

 

Drawboring Resurrected - Popular Woodworking Magazine

[jamesd]

Thanks for the reply, i'll give that article a read.

I think i'll go for a 10mm dowel, my other question is how far in should the dowel be from the opening of the mortice? most of the tenons are about 2 to 2.5 inches long so i was going to go for a 1" inset for the dowel (which would be the middle of the tenon) or should the dowel be closer to the shoulder of the tenon?

[Woodworks]

Just came across this and thought it might be of interest https://woodgears.ca/dowel/making.html