Good to see there are people out there that is following my motto: Make do, get by or do without.
I've done the same thing to make dowels but instead of a steel plate I used a half or three quarter piece of oak with the appropriate size hole drilled in it. The hole gets larger after a few inches of dowel pounding but it is easy enough to dill another one.
KP
The work bench I've been building for what seems like
> forever will have a shoulder vise (the bench that looks
> like an "L"). The legs for the shoulder vise end is
> a smidge under 36 inches long, the doors to the "quiet
> clean side" of the shop are 24 and 26 inches wide. SO -
> since this beast is going in the "noisy, less clean side"
> of the shop, and just in case I can't be buried in
> my Japanese garden and have to move, I've got to make
> the legs removable.
>
> Since the stretchers are through tenons the obvious,
> reversible solution is to draw peg the tenons in
> their through mortises in the legs. Picked up some
> half inch dowels, walnut and maple. A pair in each
> M&T joint should do it.
>
> Came time to do a test joint and SURPRISE! - one dowel
> was 0.484 - 0.492 inches in diameter and the other
> 0.508 - 0.510 inches. No lathe so now what?
>
> Then I remember seeing a steel plate with a range of
> hole diameters for making "round" dowels round in one
> of the many catalogs which appear magically in my
> mail box on a regular basis. Being 10 pm on a
> Saturday night, the idea of a) finding the catalog
> and b) waiting 'til Monday to order one of these
> specialized tools then waiting 'til Wednesday or
> Thursday to get it didn't seem acceptable.
>
> If only that plastic drill gauge The Handy Man
> Club sent me were steel ... Wait a minute -
> I picked up one of those steel ones at a garage
> sale and, forgetting I had one, bought another
> one at a woodworking show a few years later.
> Best of all, I knew exactly where both were -
> in the wall hanging tool cabinet, in the weird
> drawer in front of the #6 - with the cabinet
> scrapers and the funny looking Veritas cabinet
> scraper burnisher. Went right to them - amazing
> (you'd have to see the shop to appreciate just
> how amazing).
>
> Do you remember those kids workbenches with the
> holes, the pegs and the hammer? Well it was
> just like that. Cut a dowel a little longer
> than needed, beveled one end with sand paper and
> pound away, each dowel driven through by the
> next one.
>
> You ever wonder why woodworking drill bit sets
> come in increments of 64ths when "all you'll
> ever use is 1/8, 1/4, 3/8 and half inch"? Round
> pegs - that's why.
>
> Now I've got to decide if I want them to go
> / \ or \ /
> \ / / \
>
> Before assuming your half inch dowels are in fact
> half inch dowels, get a drill bit gauge and surprise
> yourself - then make them round and a diameter you
> have a drill bit for. Just a suggestion.
>
> charlie b
>
> BTW - if you want to see the progress on Das Bench
> go here - you can back up to the beginning if you're
> curios
> all one line
>
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