On 12/19/2020 12:10 AM, Greg Guarino wrote:

Anyway, despite a heck of a lot of long-grain surface to glue, I decided to use dowels to fasten the two pieces together. I figured that - if nothing else - they would make the alignment easy and nothing would slip when I put the clamps on. It worked well, but were the dowels a waste of time, at least for strength?

I've glued up hundreds if not thousands of panels over the years. When
I first began, I used dowels, full length slots with plywood splines,
even all thread rods. I quickly learned that none of that was needed at
all, and just made an easy task more difficult.

The important part is the boards need to be flat, joints smooth and
square. Minor adjustments can be made with cauls if needed, but your
better off if your wood is milled flat and square.

Using dowels is a task in it's self, and if alignment isn't perfect,
then the glue up will not be perfect. Much easier w/o dowels. Biscuits
are easy to use I guess, but if you don't need them for alignment, no
reason to use them. Glue itself is stronger than the wood.

Were dowels a waste of time... Probably not, you at least learned how to
use dowels and get things lined up. Consider it a learning experience.

I recently cut up an old table top I glued up 50 years ago for a lathe
project. Towards the end of the turning F*&%ing dowels turned up in the
middle of turning, spoiling the turning. At first I wondered what was
happening as a weird defect turned up in the wood.
--
Jack
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.