Dowel Jig

  Dowels have been used in wood working since forever.  Dowels were used long before nails and screws were invented and so have been a part of wood working, ship building, barn raising and stockade construction for a very, very long time.
  With a advent of cheap nails and cheap wood screws the dowel is not as important to the wood trades as it once was, in fact there are people that never use dowels at all any more.
  This blog entry will be on little interest to the none dowel folks, but, read on you may find it interesting.


  Lets talk about dowels and their jigs:


 Miller Dowel System is the dowel as it would be recognized by our ancient brother craftsmen.  The Miller dowel is designed to be driven into a bored hole, like a nail, only it is nicer to look at.  I've used Miller Dowels to hold the replacement top on my rolling work bench.  That way I know that it is solidly attached, and....there is nothing there that can hurt my edge tools.


  Typically we now think of dowels as a way to attach two pieces of wood and keep the joinery hidden.  There is a spectrum of available dowel jigs designed to make hidden joinery easier.


   Beginning at the very high end of that grouping is the Dowel Max system.  It is very good and very, very expensive.  I have used it, but don't own one.

  Joint-Genie comes from England and is a finely finished tool and one with which I have worked, with mixed results.  I know that the problem was me, not the tool.

  JessEm makes the Dowel Jig that I turn to now. It is easy to work with, accurate and priced realistically. 

   A self centering Dowel Jig  like this one made by Black Jack has the feature of enabling you to drill the dowel hole exactly in the middle of the board. Dowel Centers  are almost a necessity  to be able to get the other alignment correct.  I have used the jig many times in the past to enable me to drill holes exactly  in the centre of a board's edge, not usually for dowel applications.

   There a several other dowel jigs out there, ones made by Wolfcraft and General Tool to name just two. 


    It is important to remember that you can't get a good tool for cheap and no tool enables sloppy workmen to do quality work.