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The dowel is a cylindrical shape made of wood, plastic, or metal. In its original manufactured form, a dowel is long and called a dowel rod, which are often cut into shorter dowel pins. Dowels are commonly used as structural reinforcements in cabinet making and in numerous other applications, including:
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.William H. Whitlock, Improvement in Turning Tool, , granted Oct. 27, 1868.Sanford A. Penny, Lathe, , granted Feb. 19, 1889. Frequently, these are small bench-mounted tools.Edward A. Cherry, Tool for Forming Round Dowels and Rods, , granted Feb. 1, 1921; this is the Stanley No. 77 Dowel and Rod Turner.Abdul Aziz, Leonard G. Lee and Lloyd Sevack, Dowel Maker, , granted Aug. 26, 2001; this is the Lee Valley Veritas Dowel Maker.
For modest manufacturing volumes, wood dowels are typically manufactured on industrial dowel based on the same principles as the rotary cutters described above. Such machines may employ interchangeable cutting heads of varying , 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.Oscar H. Ordway, Dowel Making Machine, , granted May 10, 1898.George W. Davis, Dowel-Making Machine, , granted Aug. 22, 1922.
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 shot 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.
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