Good to see there are people out there that is following my motto: Make do,
get by or do without.

I've done the same thing to make dowels but instead of a steel plate I used
a half or three quarter piece of oak with the appropriate size hole drilled
in it. The hole gets larger after a few inches of dowel pounding but it is
easy enough to dill another one.

KP

charlieb wrote in message
...
The work bench I've been building for what seems like
forever will have a shoulder vise (the bench that looks
like an "L"). The legs for the shoulder vise end is
a smidge under 36 inches long, the doors to the "quiet
clean side" of the shop are 24 and 26 inches wide. SO -
since this beast is going in the "noisy, less clean side"
of the shop, and just in case I can't be buried in
my Japanese garden and have to move, I've got to make
the legs removable.

Since the stretchers are through tenons the obvious,
reversible solution is to draw peg the tenons in
their through mortises in the legs. Picked up some
half inch dowels, walnut and maple. A pair in each
M&T joint should do it.

Came time to do a test joint and SURPRISE! - one dowel
was 0.484 - 0.492 inches in diameter and the other
0.508 - 0.510 inches. No lathe so now what?

Then I remember seeing a steel plate with a range of
hole diameters for making "round" dowels round in one
of the many catalogs which appear magically in my
mail box on a regular basis. Being 10 pm on a
Saturday night, the idea of a) finding the catalog
and b) waiting 'til Monday to order one of these
specialized tools then waiting 'til Wednesday or
Thursday to get it didn't seem acceptable.

If only that plastic drill gauge The Handy Man
Club sent me were steel ... Wait a minute -
I picked up one of those steel ones at a garage
sale and, forgetting I had one, bought another
one at a woodworking show a few years later.
Best of all, I knew exactly where both were -
in the wall hanging tool cabinet, in the weird
drawer in front of the #6 - with the cabinet
scrapers and the funny looking Veritas cabinet
scraper burnisher. Went right to them - amazing
(you'd have to see the shop to appreciate just
how amazing).

Do you remember those kids workbenches with the
holes, the pegs and the hammer? Well it was
just like that. Cut a dowel a little longer
than needed, beveled one end with sand paper and
pound away, each dowel driven through by the
next one.

You ever wonder why woodworking drill bit sets
come in increments of 64ths when "all you'll
ever use is 1/8, 1/4, 3/8 and half inch"? Round
pegs - that's why.

Now I've got to decide if I want them to go
/ \ or \ /
\ / / \

Before assuming your half inch dowels are in fact
half inch dowels, get a drill bit gauge and surprise
yourself - then make them round and a diameter you
have a drill bit for. Just a suggestion.

charlie b

BTW - if you want to see the progress on Das Bench
go here - you can back up to the beginning if you're
curios
all one line
www.wood-workers.com/users/charlieb/!M&T/CBbench17.html