While working on any wood project, you need dowel pins to secure wooden parts firmly. This ensures your crafts are strong enough in every joint. You can use dowel pins in structural reinforcements such as shelf support, cabinet making, toy wheel axles, movable game pieces, and more. Read on to learn more.
What Are Wood Dowel Pins?
Wood dowel pins are straight, solid pins that contain chamfered ends. These pins help during alignment and insertion, usually utilized as fasteners.
What Are Wood Dowels?
They are made from a cylindrical wooden rod, usually cut into shorter lengths. You can purchase a wide range of pre-cut dowels that are ready for use in your project.
How Do Dowel Pins Work?
For dowel pins to work, you should first drill holes in your wooden pieces that will fit your dowel pins perfectly. You can then squeeze the dowel pins inside the holes to subsequently attach the other pieces of wood. When you insert a dowel pin in concentric holes through two or more components, it locates and securely keeps them together. A slight transitional fit or interference is also used to compress the pin and generate enough friction to firmly hold the pin in the hole.
Advantages of Using Wood Dowel Pins and Dowel Joints
No Need for Hardware
When using dowel joints in your woodworking project, you can forgo nails, screws, and staples. This means you will also avoid the potential injuries caused by these hardware items when connecting wooden pieces. Aesthetically, your project will have a professional, finished look, because screws won’t interrupt the grain pattern.
Versatility
You can use dowel joints in flat or angle joints as well as complex joints. You can make reinforced dowel joints for use in items such as shelves and cabinets that need extra accuracy.
Stronger Joints
Dowel joints provide extra strength to parts that are constantly pulled or twisted. These joints provide an even more secure connection than using a tail and pin.
Different Types of Wood Dowel Pins
When wood dowels are cut to dowel pins, they are utilized as reinforcements to joints. Note that you should always leave a path for air and excess glue to escape once you press the dowel into place. If you decide to hammer the dowel to relieve the hydraulic pressure, it can lead to a split in the wood.
If you join two wooden pieces using dowels embedded in blind holes, you can place pieces of shot between the wood to produce indentations once you clamp them. After releasing the clamp, the indentation indicates the center point where you can drill.
Here are different types of dowels:
- Pointed Dowels
- Color-Coded Dowels
- Stained and Finished Dowels
- Slotted Dowels
- Tenoned Dowels
- End-Bored Dowels
- Ladder Rungs
- Engraved or Imprinted Dowels
- Stakes – Sod Stakes, Plant Stakes
- Craft Dowels
- Skewers
- Apple Sticks
- Cosmetics & Healthcare – cotton tip applicator, make-up sticks, and cuticle sticks
- Poles
- Marshmallow Sticks
- Mop Handles
- Pennant Sticks
E.W. Hannas Manufactures Superior Dowels for Your Needs
Dowel pins make your woodworking projects easier because you don’t need hardware, and you actually achieve stronger joints. Even better, your final project has a professional, finished look. As you plan to work on your next wood project, get the highest standard dowel pins from E.W. Hannas. Contact us today for the custom wood part you need.