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A dowel is a cylindrical rod, usually made of
wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...
,
plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...
, or
metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...
. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is called a ''dowel rod''. Dowel rods are often cut into short lengths called dowel pins. Dowels are commonly used as structural reinforcements in
cabinet making A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves and/or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood (so ...
and in numerous other applications, including: * Furniture shelf supports * Moveable game pieces (i.e. pegs) * Hangers for items such as clothing, key rings, and tools * Wheel axles in toys *
Detent A detent is a mechanical or magnetic means to resist or arrest the movement of a mechanical device. Such a device can be anything ranging from a simple metal pin to a machine. The term is also used for the method involved. Magnetic detents are ...
s in gymnastics grips * Supports for tiered
wedding cakes A wedding cake is the traditional cake served at wedding receptions following dinner. In some parts of England, the wedding cake is served at a wedding breakfast; the 'wedding breakfast' does not mean the meal will be held in the morning, but ...


Wood dowel


Manufacturing process

The traditional tool for making dowels is a ''dowel plate'', an iron (or better, hardened
tool steel Tool steel is any of various carbon steels and alloy steels that are particularly well-suited to be made into tools and tooling, including cutting tools, dies, hand tools, knives, and others. Their suitability comes from their distinctive har ...
) plate with a hole having the size of the desired dowel. To make a dowel, a piece of wood is split or whittled to a size slightly bigger than desired and then driven through the hole in the dowel plate. The sharp edges of the hole shear off the excess wood.Ivin Sickels
Exercises in Wood-Working
American Book Company, 1889; see Exercise 18.— Uniting with Dowels, pages 104-105.
Dowel Making and Doweling
Scientific American
Vol. XLIX, No. 6 (Aug. 11, 1883); page 88.
H. H. Parker, Making Wood Dowels
Popular Mechanics
Vol. 41, No. 6 (June, 1924); page 957.
A second approach to cutting dowels is to rotate a piece of oversized stock past a fixed knife, or alternatively, to rotate the knife around the stock. Machines based on this principle emerged in the 19th century. Frequently, these are small bench-mounted tools. For modest
manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
volumes, wood dowels are typically manufactured on industrial dowel machines based on the same principles as the rotary cutters described above. Such machines may employ interchangeable cutting heads of varying
diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid fo ...
s, thus enabling the machines to be quickly changed to manufacture different dowel diameters. Typically, the mechanism is open-ended, with material guides at the machine's entry and exit to enable fabrication of continuous dowel rods of unlimited length. Since the 19th century, some of these dowel machines have had power feed mechanisms to move the stock past the cutting mechanism.


Application

When dowels are glued into
blind hole A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in many fields of en ...
s, a very common case in dowel-based
joinery Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes (such as laminate), to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, ...
, there must be a path for air and excess glue to escape when the dowel is pressed into place. If no provision is made to relieve the hydraulic pressure of air and glue, hammering the dowel home or clamping the joint can split the wood. An old solution to this problem is to plane a flat on the side of the dowel; some sources suggest planing the flat on the rough stock before the final shaping of the round dowel. Some dowel plates solve the problem by cutting a groove in the side of the dowel as it is forced through; this is done by a ''groove screw'', a pointed screw intruding from the side into the dowel cutting opening. When two pieces of wood are to be joined by dowels embedded in blind holes, there are numerous methods for aligning the holes. For example, pieces of
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may be placed between the wood pieces to produce indentations when the pieces are clamped together; after the clamp is released, the indentations indicate the center points for drilling.


History

The word ''dowel'' was used in
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
; it appears in Wycliffe's Bible translation (circa 1382–1395) in a list of the parts of a wheel: "...and the spokis, and dowlis of tho wheelis..." 3 Kings 7:33 in Wycliffe's Bible.


See also

*
Bar stock Bar stock, also (colloquially) known as blank, slug or billet, is a common form of raw purified metal, used by industry to manufacture metal parts and products. Bar stock is available in a variety of extrusion shapes and lengths. The most common ...
* Barrel nut * Dowel reinforced butt joint *
Dowel bar retrofit A dowel bar retrofit (DBR) is a method of reinforcing cracks in highway pavement by inserting steel dowel bars in slots cut across the cracks. It is a technique which several U.S. states' departments of transportation have successfully used in re ...
*
Dowel (juggling) Juggling clubs are a prop used by jugglers. Juggling clubs are often simply called clubs by jugglers and sometimes are referred to as pins or batons by non-jugglers. Clubs are one of the three most popular props used by jugglers; the others b ...
*
Fastener A fastener (US English) or fastening (UK English) is a hardware device that mechanically joins or affixes two or more objects together. In general, fasteners are used to create non-permanent joints; that is, joints that can be removed or disman ...
*
Kinematic coupling Kinematic coupling describes fixtures designed to exactly constrain the part in question, providing precision and certainty of location. A canonical example of a kinematic coupling consists of three radial v-grooves in one part that mate with thre ...
* Rebar *
Spring pin A spring pin (also called tension pin or roll pin) is a mechanical fastener that secures the position of two or more parts of a machine relative to each other. Spring pins have a body diameter which is larger than the hole diameter, and a chamf ...
*
Threaded rod A threaded rod, also known as a stud, is a relatively long rod that is threaded on both ends; the thread may extend along the complete length of the rod. They are designed to be used in tension. Threaded rod in bar stock form is often called all ...
*
Treenail A treenail, also trenail, trennel, or trunnel, is a wooden peg, pin, or dowel used to fasten pieces of wood together, especially in timber frames, covered bridges, wooden shipbuilding and boat building. It is driven into a hole bored through two ...


References

{{Nuts (hardware) Fasteners Joinery Woodworking fr:Goujon (bois)