A waste of time?

[russellseaton1]

I'm real late responding to this question. And I think what I am saying has already been said. But... For strength, long grain glued to log grain is super strong when glued and clamped using yellow glue. No need for additional mechanical fasteners like dowels. For alignment purposes, dowels would help. But I have never used dowels so I am skeptical its very easy to use them for alignment purposes. You have to be super super super precise aligning the drilling apparatus to make the holes for the dowels. If you are that precise with drilling the dowels to make them actually work, why not just use a little of that effort to line up the boards and glue them up right in the first place. I do use biscuits for aligning boards to edge glue. I guess they add strength too. But who cares since the long grain is super strong when done gluing. But biscuits are super easy to use and line up boards perfectly with no thought or effort. I don't think dowels are as easy to use as biscuits. Which is why biscuits were invented by Lamello I think a while ago. They replace cumbersome dowels for the lining up purposes.

[J. Clarke]

A decent doweling jig handles the alignment. You can buy them for not a huge amount of money, or make one.

[DerbyDad03]

re: "You have to be super super super precise aligning the drilling apparatus to make the holes for the dowels."

I'm not arguing for or against using dowels to help with alignment, I'm just wondering how hard you think it is to align a self-centering dowel jig, such as this style...

Granted, a biscuit joiner doesn't have to be R&R'd like a doweling jig does, but in and of itself, the "super super super precise" alignment is handled by the jig itself, assuming of course that your boards are the same thickness.

[krw]

...and you index off the same surface.

As mentioned before, I found a biscuit joiner to be absolutely useless for this purpose. The slot was so sloppy there was no way it would align the boards.

[Leon]

Well alignment of the mating holes is the issue but there is a jig that allows you to stack the mating pieces. The jig has two holes, one on top of the other. Those holes allow for precise alignment of the mating surfaces. But it is imperative that the stacked boards do not shift at all.

[Jack]

I have a high quality doweling jig. It is not automatic however, and it is not difficult to get things off enough to make alignment impossible.

Assuming your boards are milled flat and square (which they should be), by the time you set up your jig for each hole perfectly aligned, drill precise holes in all the boards, cut correct length dowels, I will already have my boards glued and clamped with no problems.

There is no reason to introduce difficulty with no benefit in a simple procedure.

My high quality doweling jig is rarely out of the closet, and has not been used for panel glue ups since I was new at the game.

[Dave Marulli]

Did you read my complete reply?

I specifically said:

"I'm not arguing for or against using dowels to help with alignment, I'm just wondering how hard you think it is to align a self-centering dowel jig... "

The only comment I was addressing was this one from russellseaton1:

"You have to be super super super precise aligning the drilling apparatus to make the holes for the dowels."

For the record: I don't use dowels or biscuits for alignment when gluing up panels.

[DerbyDad03]

Did you read my entire resp "I'm not arguing for or against using dowels to help with alignment, I'm just wondering how hard you think it is to align a self-centering dowel jig..."

My response was related only to this statement from russellseaton1:

"You have to be super super super precise aligning the drilling apparatus to make the holes for the dowels."

For the record, I do not use dowels or biscuits when when gluing up panels.

[Jack]

I read your reply. I was answering your question of "how hard do you think it is to align with a self centering jig."

I replied it is not automatic to get perfect dowel alignment even with a quality jig. You are simply wasting time and introducing potential problems for no reason so I am arguing against using dowels unless your boards are way out of wack, and even then, cauls are easier to use than dowels.

Just my opinion though, you can do whatever you want, and offer whatever advice your little heart desires.

[krw]

You may have read but you didn't comprehend.