Chinesum Dowel maker tool

[Oka]

I recently had surgery so I was laid up unable to do much other than surf the net. And....... of course I ended up in Aliexpress. I ended up buying some long nib markers and pencils (like 10 bucks for 5) and a couple of offset 1/4 drivers and finally the dowel maker. It was like 15 bucks with postage for the dowel maker.

1st Impression. The block is nicely finished Aluminum about 1/2" thick - the cutter is carbide insert.

The adjustment is you take out the out side screw move to the hole you want and then put the screw back in and ready to go.

I cut a square-strip of maple and mahogany rounded the tips as a starter, stuck the other end into a cordless drill and went at it.

I tried the fast rpm and slower rpm setting. I found it works better at slow, less tearing.

Then, I just stuck a piece of sandpaper in the vise and sanded it smooth.

Although the holes are metric, after sanding it make a near perfect Imperial dim.

Thoughts - it is a pretty cool tool for 13 bucks and I will use it from time to time when I need dowels. I would give it 4-4.5 stars, definitely does it is promises, though pretty manual. Worth the purchase.

Thought I'd share

 

[Martin Roper]

I bought that exact same device a while back. I've only tried it with some pine and got a lot of tear-out. When I get back to using it I'll try it on some better quality wood and slow it down a bit.

 

[Warped Woodwerks]

Looked at that, too, but never pulled the trigger.

Not sure how much I'd use this idea, to make dowels, but I did see a few YTs on people using their round over bits in their router table. Another cool idea, but maybe too much setup time for whatcha get in return?
Anywho.


Thanks for sharing... very helpful!

 

[danmart77]

Here is where I would like to put down my skew and spin a piece of oak thru.

 

[bob vaughan]

Great pictures. Thanks for taking the time to post them. That dowel maker seems reasonable enough for the resulting dowel.
I've got one from Woodcraft that does fantastic but they quit selling it.
Its nice to be able to make a round dowel from the species you want to use and at the diameter needed to fit the hole in question.
Dowels from the retailers have always been questionable as to both size and roundness.