Mark Fitzsimmons wrote:
: Nice tip. I had similar problems trying to turn very long dowels for
: some furniture and found that a great way to turn extremely long, thin
: dowels is with a hand plane. Start with an octagon rather than a square
: because it will whip too much to use a tool and you can't hold a
: spinning square in your hand. Wear gloves and keep your fingers away
: from the surface until it's close to round. You can use one hand as a
: steady rest on the back side and the other hand to hold the plane at an
: agle that would be like a real acute shearing cut with the skew...maybe
: 45-60 degrees or more off the axis of the dowel. As it gets rounder,
: you can bring up the tool rest and use it to stabilize the plane to
: make a really straight cut, and you can increase the angle of the plane
: edge to make a thinner slower cut for a real fine surface.

One thing I've been curious about is the degree of wear on the
sole of a plane when you do this. Seems like you'd somewhat rapidly wear
a convex section in back of the mouth of the plane, but this is just
a guess. Anyone have experience on this?

-- Andy Barss