Finding Dowel Centers
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| Begin by marking out the centerline of the scrap and an intersecting line to locate the hole for the dowel. | Using a Forstner bit at the drill press, drill out a hole of the same diameter as the dowels you’ll be marking. | Align a square with the centerlines you made on the scrap to find the center (or off-center) of your dowel. |
Marking the centerpoint at the end of a dowel takes a bit of time to do reliably with just a square or ruler. If you’re only dealing with one it’s not too bad, but if I have a number of dowels to mark, then the work can get tedious pretty quick. So, to save myself some time and effort, I use the center-marking guides you see above.
I make the guides from spare scraps of plywood. After selecting my scraps, I mark out the centerline along the length of the scrap, then mark a second line across it for the center of the dowels (Step 1). Next, I drilled out a hole to accept the dowels using a Forstner bit, as in Step 2.
To use the guide, clamp it down to your bench and insert the dowel in the hole. Then align a square with the pencil marks you made previously in both directions (Step 3). Where they intersect is the center. This is also useful for marking off-center of the dowel. The dowel you see above is one I made as part of a cam lever. To make this, I marked the hole location 1⁄8" off of the centerline. -Marc Hopkins, Des Moines, IA
