Tip to flute some dowel ?

Question

I need to create some 10mm dowles with longitudinal flutes so they can be driven into holes with glue on wood joints .... Length of dowels will be about 200 or so.

Bought the round 10mm stock ........ I have thought that I could put flutes in using a small V cutter in a router ... 3 equally spaced flutes about 2mm deep would be enough.

Anybody had to do this ... just looking for simple way to hold wood (or router to accomplish.

I have a 1/4" hand router, also have a 1/2" router table.

At moment can't think how to stop wood rotating (or flying across room) .. this is a one off job, so don't wnat to waste time & money on some over the top jig.

Bob Minchin · Accepted Answer

Bolt a block onto the base of your router with a central cross hole to match the dowel diameter. Plunge a vee cutter into the block so it just penetrates into the dowel hole and then back it off a touch to stop it rubbing. Then just feed the dowel through the hole as many times as you want flutes.

Rick Hughes · Answer

good man ... my job for tonight then   :-)

Martin Bonner · Answer

The traditional way to do this is to cut the dowel to length and then wipe a tenon-saw/dovetail saw along the length of the dowel.

The easy way is to buy ready-fluted dowels, eg:

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... but it's a bit late for that :-)

Rick Hughes · Answer

didn't know you could buy them in lengths ... handy to know. I used the Bob Minchin tip and fluted them and now fitted to the scarf  beams joints.

John Rumm · Answer

Drill hole, about dowel diameter in bit of scrap steel. Peen the burr in  a bit in a few places, then push / hammer the dowel through the hole,  and the burr will leave a scratch pattern.

Andy Burns · Answer

Except those aren't fluted, can't see any on eBay longer than 90mm for  10mm diameter.

Martin Bonner · Answer

d'oh! I got confused by the pixelation. I did find some others which were *definitely* fluted - but they were quite a *bit* pricier.

(I like John Rumm's suggestion for a thing to create the flutes by scratching.)

Tip to flute some dowel ?

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