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 th ...

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 (s ...

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

axle An axle or axletree is a central shaft for a rotating wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to the vehicle, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In the former case, bearing ...

s 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 a r ...

volumes, wood dowels are typically manufactured on industrial dowel

machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...

s 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 for ...

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 Hydraulics (from Greek: Υδραυλική) is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid coun ...

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 p ...

; it appears in

Wycliffe's Bible Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translati ...

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

References

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

Wood dowel

Manufacturing process

Application

History

See also

References