Description
You’ve heard of round dowels, but square ones? Square dowels can be used as decorative pegs in furniture, as part of joinery, and I’ve even seen them used to hide screw holes.
But my needs are much simpler. If I’m going to make a round dowel like we talked about in Bitesize 18, I need to start with square stock.
You can buy these guys, but look at the sticker shock on them. This little 36-inch, 3/4-inch square dowel costs about three bucks. That’s not going to break the bank, but let’s think about this. For the price of two of these, you can buy a single board that can make four pieces the same size. And when you make your own, you’re not stuck with one size, one length, or one species.
There is a trick to this, so it’s not about grabbing any old piece of wood and cutting it to shape.
You need to start with dry, stable wood and, whenever possible, look for grain that runs straight along the length of the piece. If the grain runs out through the side, those fibers don’t continue from one end of the dowel to the other, making a square dowel more likely to split.
If your dowels are going to take some stress, like ones used as pegs, one of the best ways to get straight grain is to rive the stock. When you split wood instead of sawing it, the split naturally follows the grain, so you can see exactly how those fibers travel before sizing your blank.
If I need something large, like a 3/4-inch dowel, I do the obvious. I start with 3/4-inch stock and rip it to width. That’s simple.
But if I’m under 1/2 inch, which is the majority of the square dowels I make, there’s a really easy way to do this using the cut-flip-cut method.
And it’s exactly what it sounds like. I set the blade a hair higher than the width I’m looking for, move the table saw fence to that exact width, make a pass, rotate the board 90 degrees, and make another cut.
Because ripping tiny strips on a table saw can get sketchy pretty quickly, I find this method much easier to control.
There’s one thing to keep in mind with dowels like these. Ripping narrow pieces can release internal stresses in the wood, so I usually only make what I need. Even if the board starts out perfectly straight, those little strips can bow or twist later.
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