Simple Dowel Making Jig

Originally posted 2016-11-27 by Brad. Brought over from the old Plan-to-Build archive.

I spent several hours in the shop yesterday trying to make a dowel making jig similar to the one Mathias Wandell (https://woodgears.ca/dowel/making.html) and Izzy Swan had on their sites. I could never get them to work just right and spent way more time tweaking the setup or sharpening the cutting blades than making any dowels. I ended up making one that mounts on the table saw and is really simple to make and use. This particular design skips a step they did where the corners of the square stock was either rounded over or cut off with 45 degree cuts on the table saw.

Archive Notes

This jig can be made in a matter of minutes and is easy to fine tune the final size of the dowels by simply raising or lowering the blade of the table saw. In my setup I am using a 7 1/4” sawblade. If a 10” blade is used the jig may need to be a little longer to acomodate the larger radius the blade cuts. As illustrated in the animation you simply drill two hole sizes into a block of wood. The larger hole acts as a guide to keep the square stock from vibrating when it enters the cutting radius of the blade while the smaller hole does a similar thing to the final size of the dowel. The final size of the dowel can be adjusted by raising or lowering the sawblade.

Additional Photos