Dowelmax rocks my world
No free tool giveaway for this one–unfortunately these things are spendy, so they couldn’t part with a freebie.
The Good: The best way to join two pieces of wood together, period.
The Bad: The price.
The Bottom Line: One of those cases where the best really is that good.
NSY rating: FIVE THUMBS UP (5/5)
The Full Deal:
The DowelMax doweling jig probably already has you scratching your head. “OK”, you think to yourself, “This is a really nice dowling jig. I get that. It’s better than the next best dowling jig, maybe even a lot better.”
“But TWO HUNDRED THIRTY DOLLARS?!?” you think to yourself.
“No way it’s that good.”
And you’re wrong.
There’s two reasons the Dowelmax is worth every penny you’ll pay for it, and in fact will become an indispensible part of your shop on par with your table saw or router. First, because it’s made perfectly. Second, because it works perfectly.
When I say it’s made perfectly, what I mean is this. The people who invented it thought of every tomfool way you could bollox up your woodworking projects with their product, and engineered around it. Here’s just a sampling of the dumb things you can’t screw up with it.
1) Drop it. The thing’s machined out of solid metal. If you drop it, you might have to file down a small ridge. But since the faces are all huge, that won’t affect your accuracy one bit.
2) Not use it right. They put these checkmark and registration marks all over it, and give you instructions for how to use them that even a concussed chimpanzee can comprehend. Some of the advanced features may require a few moments’ thought, but even then, you can watch the instruction video (included) and repeat after them.
3) Wear it out. As previously mentioned, this is the direct descendant of a large cube of solid metal. The inserts are all hardened tool steel; you’ll break your drill bit before you make a dent in them (and they’re replaceable anyway).
4) Line it up improperly. No careful eyeballing, ginger clamping, or trying to remember which edge is the registration face and which edge is gonna make your box turn out like a rhombus. Large, flat, perfectly machined edges make sure that it’s trivially simple to align it. The pieces are symmetric, so you can flip them on axis without ruining your alignment.
5) Get frustrated using it. It takes about 30 seconds to switch from one setup to another. The screws, like everything else, are machined out of big hunks of metal, so they spin on and off like butter.
When I say it works perfectly, it’s a little harder to explain. Let me try.
Woodworking consists of roughly three phases.
1) Cut/drill/rout/puncture/maul/splinter things
2) Align and glue
3) Apply finish
They don’t always come in order, but they usually do. Master these three steps and you’re set. Now, of all 3 steps, which one is the most heartrending?
It’s not 1. During step one, everything’s in pieces. Even if you make a mistake, it’s probably not obvious. If you did screw it up, you’ve only destroyed one piece; a small fraction of your total project.
It’s not step 3. During step 3, the whole damn thing is sitting there beautifully before you. You might have to strip off your finish if you botch it, but there’s no question that the project is gonna get done.
It’s step 2. Alignment and glueup is the most heartrending, miserable, desolate time in a woodworker’s life. It’s when you notice that you referenced to top of Piece A and the bottom of Piece B when you cut your biscuits, so the thing just ain’t gonna line up no matter how loud you cry. It’s where you first notice that your table’s glueup will require you to sand off three board feet of walnut to get it flush. It’s that delicate discovery when your tenon kinda jiggles around in your mortise. Etcetera. Basically, it’s where all the mistakes of 1) become evident, with approximately four minutes left until the glue sets up.
Dowelmax fixes this.
Any joint that can be made with a dowel can be made perfectly with a dowelmax. I drilled over 300 dowel holes with the dowelmax on one project, and I had exactly 1 of them come out wrong. It was not because the product was somehow defective; it’s because I, with all the mental alacrity of the aforementioned concussed chimpanzee, forgot to put the depth stop on the drill bit. Sure enough, I drilled a hole right through to the back side. Even then, it was nothing a plug cutter and a bit of glue couldn’t fix.
Compare that with 8 dowels I drilled with dowel points for comparison–2 of the 8 didn’t align properly when I assembled it.
So what this all means is that the dowelmax is so precise, your glueups always match. Always. Without fail. Take a look at this.
Shown are four of six boards that need to be joined in pairs. I decided to do massive overkill and use 15 dowels per pair (which, by the way, took me about 12 min for all 6 boards). That means each of the 6 boards requires 15 holes. If any one of those 90 holes is off by 1/32, the pieces won’t slide together.
Every single pair of boards slid together perfectly.
What about strength? Well, here’s a board that I cut in two places. The left cut I doweled, the right cut I biscuited. Note that I could only fit one biscuit, but I could fit 5 dowels. I skipped one because I felt particularly daring.
Here’s that same board after I slammed it over a pipe, holding both ends firmly.
The poor biscuit didn’t have much of a chance. How is a piece of pressed fiberboard supposed to stand up to four solid wood pegs?
Of course, I had to bounce the beam. I set the board on a few pegs and whacked it with a hammer. Again, and again, and again.
Note that the wood literally split in half the long way down the center; the dowels were fine.
You’ve probably got a couple of tools in your shop already that cost more than this one and will get used less. Take it from me, this one is worth the dough.
Pick up a Dowelmax. You’ll thank me for it.
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