Doweling jigs provide an efficient and cost effective alternative to biscuit joiners and pocket hole jigs for joining stock. They excel at the most common kinds of joinery operations: edge-to-edge, edge-to-end, edge-to-inside, rail-to-stile and miter joints. There are a number of doweling jigs on the market, three of which I recently tested. I used each of these jigs extensively over a three-month period, trying them out on all five basic joinery operations. The best jig for you will depend upon the kind of doweling you do.
The Smart Doweling Jig from the United States is the most compact of the three jigs, designed so that you can clamp two boards at once; the boards can be from ½” to 1 ⅝” thick. For ¾” boards, just pop them into the jig and drill away. For other board thicknesses you need to use shims. When drilling ½” stock you place two ⅛” plastic shims (provided) against the clamping surfaces, and insert a ¼” shim (which you provide) between the boards. The alignment slots work not only for the edge-to-inside joints but also indicate where the dowel holes are being drilled. The guide holes are ⅜”, set 1” apart. The jig comes with a drill bit, depth stop (that conveniently fixes to the end of one of the guide rods) and an allen wrench that, thoughtfully, attaches to the body of the jig. You also get an instruction booklet and an assortment of ⅜” dowel pins. The bushings aren’t removable but they are hardened, so they should last a long time.
The Smart Doweling Jig did a commendable job on all five joinery operations. It’s certainly the fastest jig to use, particularly for doing edge-toedge, mitre and rail-to-stile joinery. There is no slop along the guide rods and the handle clamping screw turns smoothly. Except for edge-to inside joints, there is no need to draw alignment marks on the boards you are joining together, as you drill the holes in both boards at the same time. I found this to be a real time saver. For edge-to-end joints you have to remove the main body of the jig and turn it around. The jig also allows off-centre (or reference face) doweling. The guide holes are only 1” apart, so when drilling long stock you end up moving the jig quite a bit. I’d love to see a wider version of the jig, with guide holes, say, 6” apart (the spacing I use when gluing up wide, solid wood panels). However, this is an uncomplicated, easy to use jig that is very well constructed.
The DowelMax is a new Canadian jig from O.M.S. Tool Co. It’s an impressive jig, having won the International Innovator’s Gold Medal Award last year at the Tomorrow’s World Exhibition held in London, England. The body is machined aluminum, the fittings are solid brass, and the guide bushings are hardened steel. The jig comes with five ⅜” hardened steel bushings, one ⅜” slotted spacer and an instruction booklet. Optional accessories include two ¾” and one 1 ⅝” spacers, an indexing tool, adjustable distance gauge, angle clamp bracket, and ¼” bushings with related ⅛” spacer.
I liked the wide clamping surface of the DowelMax (a generous 3 ½”) and the fact that it has five guide holes. The knurled brass knobs are substantial, making them easy to tighten. You get a choice of drilling holes ⅝”, 1 ⅜”, 2” or 2 ⅝” apart. With the optional register pin you can easily chain drill dowel holes. The jig handled all five major joinery operations with ease. One of the nicest features of the DowelMax is the ability to dowel large stock. By utilizing the 1 ⅝” spacers the jig can readily accommodate up to 4” by 4” stock, something no other jig on the market offers. You will notice a mark inscribed on the end of the reference block that holds the bushings (see photo) and a similar mark on the inside of the reference plate (the marks are inscribed on both ends of the block). These check marks help you correctly align your stock: it ensures that you are always drilling holes from the same reference face of the stock. So, if you have two boards of slightly different thicknesses, any variation will show up on one side only. The optional adjustable distance gauge enables you to join longer boards, spacing the dowel holes further apart. When doing edge-to-end and edge-to-inside doweling you have to remove the clamp bracket and attach it to the base of the reference plate (see photo). For larger dimension stock this jig is unbeatable. The DowelMax is a well-engineered, professional quality jig that will provide years of service.
The Veritas Dowelling Jig (another Canadian product) is largely a dedicated edge-to-edge doweling jig (although you can dowel the ends of boards, you can’t dowel the inside face). Like the other two jigs above, it does both centered and reference face doweling. The body of the jig and the bushing carrier are anodized aluminum; the fittings are solid brass. The jig comes with 3 hardened steel bushings (¼”, 5/16” and ⅜”), a register pin, allen wrench and instruction booklet. A variety of bushings in other sizes (including metric) are available.
The Veritas Dowelling Jig enables you to drill holes as close as ⅝” – at a more common 1 ¼” and a full 6 ⅜” apart. I found this last dimension perfect for doweling long boards. I only needed to make one alignment mark on both boards, and then use the register pin to chain drill holes. This makes for very fast panel assembly. If you need the flexibility of smaller dowel size holes, this jig can’t be beat. You can even get a 3/32” bushing that is made of unhardened steel so you can drill it to any custom size. The hole spacing on the Veritas jig is based on the 32mm system which is part of the more comprehensive 32mm shelf drilling product line available from Lee Valley. Like all Veritas tools you get exceptional quality: really well machined parts and high tolerances at competitive prices.
Sources: Veritas Dowelling Jig (05J08.01)
Lee Valley Tools
800-267-8761 www.leevalley.com
DowelMax
O.M.S. Tool Company Ltd
(604) 986-1850 www.dowelmax.com
CARL DUGUAY is the web editor for Canadian Woodworking & Home Improvement Magazine
AS A SUBSCRIBER YOU GET 6 ISSUES PLUS
Bonus 45-page eBook: Essential Workshop Jigs and Techniques
Use of Canadian Woodworking's Website and It's Content
This website is presented with the understanding that:
The authors, editors and related web personnel are not responsible for the results of any actions taken on the basis of information on this website, nor for any errors or omissions;
This website is not engaged in rendering professional advice/services; and
Any and all content submitted by this website's users is in no way an expression of the beliefs or opinions of the owners, webmasters, authors and editors.
Canadian Woodworking disclaims all liability for any claim in relation to:
• any matters or factors outside of its control, including the availability or unavailability of the website and digital content due to the availability of the Internet, or telecommunications or other infrastructure systems; for any reasons including but not limited to power outages and maintenance.
The owners, webmasters, administrators, authors and editors, expressly disclaim all and any liability to any person, whether a user of this website or not, in respect of anything and of the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done by any such person in reliance, whether whole or partial, upon the whole or any part of the contents of this website. Please exercise caution when working with any tools or machinery. Follow common safety rules and precautions as outlined in any manuals related to the equipment being used. If advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Use of Canadian Woodworking site and Forum
By posting on this site and forum, the poster grants to Canadian Woodworking Magazine/Website the unrestricted rights to use of the content of the post for any purpose, including, but not limited to, publishing the posted material, including images, in print or electronic form in a future issue or issues of Canadian Woodworking magazine or related Canadian Woodworking products, and to use the post for promotional purposes without further compensation, as well as the right to use the poster's name in a credit along with the post.
CanadianWoodworking never shares, sells or rents your information to any third party without your permission.
This statement explains how we collect information from you and what we do with that information.
What this Privacy Policy Covers
This Privacy Policy covers CanadianWoodworking.com's treatment of personally identifiable information that CanadianWoodworking.com collects when you are on the CanadianWoodworking.com site, and when you use CanadianWoodworking.com's services. This policy also covers CanadianWoodworking.com's treatment of any personally identifiable information that CanadianWoodworking.com's business partners share with CanadianWoodworking.com.
This policy does not apply to the practices of companies that CanadianWoodworking.com does not own or control, or to people that CanadianWoodworking.com does not employ or manage.
Information Requests and Use
CanadianWoodworking.com collects personally identifiable information when you use certain CanadianWoodworking.com services, when you visit CanadianWoodworking.com pages, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. CanadianWoodworking.com may also receive personally identifiable information from our business partners.
Personally identifying information is information that can be used to identify who you are such as: name, mailing address, email address. To enter certain areas of the site, you will be required to register and provide information about yourself. This information is for the purposes of Canadian Woodworking and helps us to tailor the site to best meet the needs of our audience.
CanadianWoodworking.com also automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser including your IP address, CanadianWoodworking.com cookie information and the page you requested.
CanadianWoodworking.com uses information for three general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, and to fulfill your requests for certain products and services.
Promotions
The personal information that we retain is what is provided by you voluntarily. We use it to send you information about Canadian Woodworking and its products or to correspond with you regarding your subscription. If you are a subscriber we need this information to be able to deliver you our product(s) and service your subscription.
By completing a form on this website, you will be able to receive email correspondence from Canadian Woodworking. These emails may include information on upcoming events or special offers for subscribers. If you do not wish to receive email correspondence please email [email protected] and ask to be removed from our email list. Every email that we send to you will include an "opt-out" from receiving future email correspondence.
Aggregate information is information that cannot identify you personally. We collect information on our subscribers that may be used in summary reports presented to our advertisers. This information helps them to better understand our audience and provide advertisements that are more likely to be of interest to you and your organization.
Our intention is always to gather information that will help us serve you better and never to gather information without your knowledge.
As with most websites, we do log web visits. This information, however, does not have a link to you personally. These logs help us understand the needs of our audience and the areas of our site that you do or do not find useful. When you simply browse our site, no personal information is being collected. We may disclose this non-personal information to third parties such as sponsors, clients or advertisers.
Information Sharing and Disclosure
CanadianWoodworking.com will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone.
CanadianWoodworking.com will send personally identifiable information about you to other companies or people when:
We have your consent to share the information;
We need to share your information to provide the product or service you have requested;
We need to send the information to companies who work on behalf of CanadianWoodworking.com to provide a product or service to you. (Unless we tell you differently, these companies do not have any right to use the personally identifiable information we provide to them beyond what is necessary to assist us.);
We respond to subpoenas, court orders or legal process; or
We find that your actions on our web sites violate the CanadianWoodworking.com Terms of Service or any of our usage guidelines for specific products or services.
Cookies
CanadianWoodworking.com may set and access CanadianWoodworking.com cookies on your computer.
Cookies are small text files that most Web sites, including canadianwoodworking.com place on your computer. Cookies help us identify your interests. They also prevent you from having to register repeatedly on canadianwoodworking.com or from repeatedly seeing the same ads.
Canadianwoodworking.com is not able, and does not wish, to use cookies to track your activities on the Web outside of our site. And no cookie delivered by us will interfere with the operation of your computer.
In cases where there are links to other sites, Canadian Woodworking recommends that you review their organization's privacy policy, as once you have left our site you become subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site.
Third party advertising
If you submit your name through a form on our website to request information from an advertiser or third party, canadianwoodworking.com is not responsible for any marketing or other use of your name by that third party.
Security
In certain areas CanadianWoodworking.com uses industry-standard SSL-encryption to protect data transmissions.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
CanadianWoodworking.com may amend this policy from time to time. By using this site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. Canadian Woodworking reserves the right to make changes to this policy at any time. Please check back periodically to review any changes.
Questions or Suggestions
If you have questions or suggestions please contact us.