"MM" wrote in message
...
In another situation I drilled a hole for a dowel through both pieces
of wood, glued the dowel and hammered it in. But stupidly I had not
previously located a suitable punch to punch it right through into the
second piece, and by the time I did find one (30 seconds) that dowel
was immovable. I've done this before and it works fine as long as one
does not pause even for a second whilst hammering it through.

That would be the dowel expanding due to moisture... ?