Dowel Jig Basics [video 441]

so we're going back about 20 years or so when i first started cutting stuff up and joining it back together again i started that as most people do with nails and glue and then i progressed to screws and glue and then i bought a cheap little dowel jig it wasn't particularly good i wasn't very happy with the results from it so i moved on from that i tried a cheap biscuit jointer and that worked okay and then i moved on from that i ended up with a domino and that worked pretty well for me for many years and it still does and i never really gave much thought to dowels after that until fairly recently i knew i had the idea for the cabinetry basics series that's a series as well as worth watching if you haven't caught that yet and i actually used a cheap little dollar i bought this one for 12 or 13 pounds of amazon and i used that for the first time on the lightweight trestles video and i got some really good results out of it and it wasn't until i actually used it on the cabinetry basics video though i realized that other than the color this is almost identical to the cheap little bell jig that i threw away because i didn't get good results from it 20 years ago and it turns out of course that it wasn't the dow jig that was the problem 20 years ago it was me i wasn't very good 20 years ago i've got better at this and in this video i'm just going to show you a few pointers to help you get the best from a cheap little jig like this now whenever you get your hands on a little dowel jig for the first time you start looking for instructions on this and they invariably talk about three types of joint there's an l joint where you've got either the top or the base into a cabinet there's a t joint like you've got a fixed shelf in the side of a cabinet and there's what they call a panel to panel joint or a butt joint where you just join two panels together i'm going to talk about the t joint and the l joint here because to be perfectly honest in 20 years of doing this for a living you can count the number of panel to panel joints i've done on the thumb of one hand before we get into any of the t and l joints though i need to repeat myself for a minute i'm just going to mark up the face side and edge before we do anything else this is just generally good practice to do i'm going to use the traditional markings that's a funny little arrow on the edge and a squiggle that's actually a copper plate f for face on the face and the face side and edge are literally just the bits that face outwards and it's important to know that because you need to be able to reference off the right parts when you're using any kind of tool with a fence like this there's one on the dowel jig there's one on a domino there's one on a lamella zeta there's one on a biscuit jointer and there's one on the peanut mini jig whenever you've got a fence like this you need to know what you're referencing off what the datum is so that you can get things consistent so there we are face side and edge marked that's going to be the outside face and the top edge of our carcass and obviously this is the side so we want to be putting dowels onto the inside face so the next thing we're going to do is make life easy for ourselves in the marking out we're just going to use a sliding square to mark in from either edge now you don't have to do this you can just sort of put a pencil mark wherever you want but it's generally good practice to get into being consistent and you're marking in from the edge so i'm just going to use a sliding square on this to go inside and i'm just working off the inside face and then we're just going to put one of these around about the center it doesn't have to be exact so with the face sides flat on the bench we can now transfer those marks from one side to the other then extend them down along the edge all right so we've got our boards all marked up we know where the dowels are going i want to get the fence set up on the dowel jig because this is the l joint i'm not that bothered about the dowels being exactly centered in the board on a t joint maybe where you're putting a shelf and you want that shelf to be on the center line that's a little bit more important i'll show you another way of centering the dowels uh on the end of a board uh when we get to do the t joint but for the l joint i'm just setting the fence to about nine mil because it's about an eighteen mil thick board and because we're referencing off the fence off a face and an edge it's always going to align so i've done that bit and i've set the depth stop on the drill bit to give us just a hair over 15 mil showing i'm using 8 by 30 more dials so i'm just a little bit more than 15 mil showing and i'm using 8 by 30s to make life easier for myself because we can drill the same depth in the edge and the face of the boards without changing the stop and i'm using a regular bit not a brad point a lip and spur bit because that little point can give us a few problems if we try and go too deep but i'm also going to run a quick test on this on on a piece of scrap partly to make sure that we're drilling deep enough because there's nothing worse than you drilling your dowel holes trying to assemble the joint and having a little sliver where it won't quite meet because you haven't quite drilled deep enough so i'm just going to test that now and then we'll start drilling these out for real so when it comes to putting a dowel into the face and we've got our lines all marked up here one of the things i find particularly difficult is you get the fence hole aligned okay but actually lining up the jig against the pencil mark is really hard because as soon as you get close to it you block out all the light this is where one of our little brad point bits comes in handy because you can get the brad point bit in there you can put the fence flush up against the edge and drop the point of the bit down bring it across until it's against your line and then just bring the jig down onto it and what i've found particularly useful is to actually just clamp the jig down as well and then you can drill that through without any fear of the jig actually moving i know almost all the jigs do come with a sort of a handle you can sort of hand hold them but i've all you know how many hands have you got it's better in many ways to clamp that down if you can it doesn't have to be a fancy climber little spring clamp as long as it's big enough to go on there that'll keep it sort of locked in tight just while you drill your holes that makes a big difference [Music] so [Music] oh yeah not bad [Music] remember that okay so t joint we're going to do this slightly differently less measuring and marking out we're just going to give ourselves a center line that we want the we want the shelf to go up against and then we're going to just give ourselves some arbitrary marks where we want the dowels to go we're actually going to center this one and the way we do that pop this in on edge we do need to take the fence off for this so we need to do these little legs on the back of the jig will automatically depending on how they're arranged we'll center the jig and i'm just going to put a little spring clamp on one of those legs just to help us along a little bit and then we can just drill these through and we're going to pop [Music] three dowels in there and then we can line this up against here our little jig has little notches cut out in the back of it and our eight mil notch will line up against that dowel perfectly and there are little marks on the side of the jig that show you where the center is [Music] [Music] so another sort of moment of truth moments and no measuring or marking just referenced off the dowels that we already drilled and fitted and that should okay all nicely referenced nice and tight minimal measuring and marking just putting the dowels in where you wanted them to be into the end and then referencing off those using this as a fence effectively so there we are two of the most common types of joint a t-joint and an l-joint all done with dowels that cost pennies less than a penny each certainly and a dowel jig that cost around 12 or 13 pounds last time i looked you couldn't actually get this jig as a standalone piece you had to get it as part of a kit um which meant you got drill bits and other things as well took the price up to around 16 or 17 pounds if you've got the bits already then you might want to consider spending the same kind of money on this one it's a wolfcraft jig it's a little bit more workmanlike and one of the main differences is you can take the fence off much more easily for those mid panel fixings for the t-joints so if that's something you're going to do if you're going to be making cabinets with fixed shelves in maybe consider this one instead but i'll leave it there for this week i think i hope you enjoyed this quick dowel jig tips video if you did then give the video a big thumbs up or two or leave me a comment down below if you'd like to see more like this there are links in the video description to the products that i've shown here today so be sure to take a look for additional information but i'll leave it there thanks for watching as always thanks so much to my patreon partners and my youtube members for their amazing support if you'd like to be part of the conversation part of the community that helps shape the content of these public facing videos as well as getting access to behind the scenes and exclusive content then come and join us as a patreon supporter or youtube member we'd love to have you on board and taking part while my member credits roll i'll leave you with one more quick tip so stay watching for that but that's it for this week thanks again for watching stay safe take care and i'll see you next time so one more quick tip before you go this is if your ocd is starting to kick in and you have to use the fence on the dowel jig but you absolutely must have that dowel centered in the board what you do you take a piece of scrap like this you take your dowel jig with the fence off and the little pegs and you center that love festival drills never done that before so you take your dowel jig and you center the eight mil on your board or whatever you're using [Music] and drill your hole you pop a dowel in there and you put the fence back on and you put the jig over that dowel and then you line the fence up tighten them up again obviously this is off your face siding edge and that is your dowel jig aligned and centered perfectly enjoy you

Channel: Peter Millard

Views: 97,581

Rating: 4.9788513 out of 5

Keywords: woodwork, workshop, DIY hack, how-to, carpentry, cabinets, festool, MDF, Domino, Lamello, Clamex, Tenso, Dowel, jointing, joining, Peanut, peanut connector, peanut 2, casings, carcass, MFT, rail square, ripping sheets, breaking down sheet goods

Id: zTj_hiEVfvw

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021