I'm hoping to tap the collective wisdom for experience and/or pointers to web resources.
I'm planning on making spindles for a project (an hourglass) out of two contrasting woods (maple & bloodwood, likely). They'll be on the order of 3/8", square cross-section. For visual aesthetics, I'd like to join them end-to-end with a scarf joint, cut at 45 degrees (if that actually qualifies as a scarf joint?). They'll be taking some light compression load as well as lateral load (figure people will pick it up by the spindles). My questions are:
1) Will a 45 degree cut suffice for gluing the joint without additional reinforcements?2) Should I go for something like epoxy because of the quasi-end grain nature of the joint?
3) I'm considering reinforcing this with a thin dowel along the long axis (completely hidden).I suspect my glue joint will hold up at least until I get it out of the shop, but may not survive much wear-and-tear. The interior dowel ought to hold, right?
TIA,
Larry