Dowel Plates Transform Scrapwood

The tool that gets borrowed most often by my co-workers at FWW is not one of my many prized handplanes but my old, beat-up dowel plate. This tool does a great job of turning scrapwood into dowels and pegs just by hammering square stock through one of the holes. My dowel plate has long been out of production, which is one reason why it’s so in demand. Now two companies have stepped up and filled the niche.

The Lie-Nielsen dowel plate, made from hardened A2 steel, is ready to make dowels in diameters ranging from 1⁄8 in. to 5⁄8 in. (There is also a metric version.) My original only went down to 1⁄4 in., and I really like the option of making smaller pins. Veritas has a different take. Veritas uses individually sized inserts, or “formers,” made from A2 steel, that snap into a steel plate. You can buy a set that includes the plate and four standard-size inserts (imperial or metric). Or you can buy the plate ($11.50) and just the inserts you need ($9.50 apiece).

Both products worked well and created accurately sized dowels. I found that pre-chamfering the corners of the stock and tapering the end in a pencil sharpener made the process easier and yielded better results. Each plate can be mounted to a bench or support block, but I typically just put the plate over a dog hole in my bench and pound away.

Which one to buy? It depends on the number of sizes you want. The Veritas system is a good value if you only need a few, but the Lie-Nielsen plate is a cheaper way to go if you want them all.

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