Replies

1. 
   john_c2 | Apr 06, 2022 03:43pm | #1

   I use the same plug cutter that Becksvoort does to make the tenons for knows and pulls. It's really the perfect tool for the job. Make the tenon with the plug cutter on the drill press, trim the waste on the bandsaw, then turn the knob portion. The cutter is from CMT.

   https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000P4NNN2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

2. 
   3steers | Apr 06, 2022 06:22pm | #2

   Option two; drill a hole in end grain of future knob and glue in a dowel for a tenon. Avoids need for plug cutter, although it may limit the minor diameter of the knob waist profile a bit.

3. 
   jake_w | Apr 06, 2022 09:12pm | #3

   I use the barrel type plug cutter to do this and it works. If you are purchasing a new one, buy the other kind. It works, but not well. I turn these on occasion and use my lathe. I tried to do this on a drill press and I struggled with getting a "tool rest" adjusted appropriately to cut well. I was also using a cheap gouge. It was a struggle, but workable. I think if I put more thought in to setting the drill press to cut more like a lathe it would produce better results. I wish you the best of luck.

4. 
   lat_axe | Apr 07, 2022 05:37am | #4

   Thanks all for the answers so far.

   A set of the smaller dowel-making plug cutters has been on my list of tools to get for a good while now. I'd like to use them for making dowels out of the scraps of hardwood I generate from furniture making - the oak, ash, maple, cherry, walnut, teak, iroko ..... and much else.

   I do quite a lot of decorative plug making as my preferred furniture styles are various Arts & Crafts, many of which use decorative contrasting plugs over dowels. It would be good to just have full dowels in the right timber rather than having to make a plug then shorten the dowel to make room for it.

   I have made knobs on the old drill press (a portable power drill in a Wolfcraft press) by doing as 3steers suggests - putting a dowel into a hole drilled in the workpiece. This works well enough if one can centre the dowel exactly in the piece to be be filed & rasped to shape on the drill press in making the knob. In practice it can be quite difficult to exactly centre that dowel to avoid knob-wobble! And some dowels are not so round as they oughta be. :-)

   **********
   John C2's link to the toothed CMT plug cutter is revealing .... of yet another example of "rip-off Britain". $24 in the US but £47 in the UK! That's over $60!! Outrageous!!! ('Scuse my yelp of dismay and chagrin).

   So I might try a much less expensive barrel plug cutter, since Jake_W suggests they will work on end grain. If they do, all well and good. I can buy a small set of good quality barrel plug cutters for a fraction of the price of of a set of the toothed varieties. They might not stay sharp as long but I'm only a hobbyist user; and the barrel style cutters look easier to sharpen.

   *******
   Anyone else with experience of the barrel style cutters, especially in end grain? Will they really cut a full length (up to 2" long) dowel in end grain? Do they blunt quickly? Are they easily sharpened?

   **********
   There are a couple of gubbins sold that purport to turn a drill press into a vertical lathe, using a vertical bar as a tool rest and a tailstock-like item to go in the the drill press platform. They get poor reviews as being impractical to use in turning with a vertical orientation. I'll confine my attempts to using files and rasps a la Christian Becksvoort.

   Lataxe

1. 
   john_c2 | Apr 07, 2022 08:35am | #5

   Lee Valley has several square hole punches that are fantastic for square pegs. Drill a hole, use the square punch to clean out the corners, and pound in a square peg. It really makes an Arts and Crafts piece.

1. 
   lat_axe | Apr 07, 2022 10:22am | #7

   My own square 'oles are made using old mortiser square chisels, for which I make the square rods of ebony, oak or whatever with a-one o' them Bridge City planes with the side-struts, enabling one to plane down to a very precise thickness. I cut off a bit of the squared rod to make the plug.

   I can't recall where I acquired these old mortiser chisels but I do remember that whoever gave them to me was scathing about their poor quality as such. As square hole makers for wee plugs, though, they're just the job. They don't hold their edge that well but a set of those Lee Valley diamond-coated cone sharpeners puts a fresh edge on them in no time.

   *********

   There are articles in the various magazines showing the making of longer plugs (dowels, really) from square stock with one end of the dowel rounded. I'm wondering if a drill press plug cutter will enable these to be made easily.

   Cut the round parts from a block of wood then slice the block to leave the un-drilled ends square. Precise spacing of the drilled cut-outs, followed by precise slicing out of the round-to-square dowels, would be the things to achieve, I suppose.

   Lataxe

5. 
   DRBWWing | Apr 07, 2022 09:56am | #6

   +1 on using a dowel. Why spend money when you don't have to?

1. 
   lat_axe | Apr 07, 2022 10:31am | #8

   "Why spend money when you don't have to?"

   Ha ha - a very good question to which there approximately 36,791 answers, only 50% of which are rationalisations-after-the-fact. :-)

   Perhaps the short and all-encompassing answer is: to enable play-for-growedups. Aside from those pecksniffing accountants obsessed with bottom lines, every human I know spends money for the pleasure of play rather than to gain mere monetary profit. We never really get over the notion and pleasures of toys, do we? Well, I never did. :-)

   But if your inner accountant must be mollified before s/he lets you at your own wallet, consider this: Many high quality tools can be sold a decade after you acquired and used them for the same amount you paid ... or more. I've now lost count of the number of such toys I've done this with.

   Every one wins, then: the chief accountant (often the ladywife); yourself, the tool-enjoyer; the lucky fellow who acquires a first rate tool that, although second-hand, costs less than the new one and may well be better-made, not to mention tuned to perfection by you, the seller.

   Lataxe, an expert spending-rationalist and big kid.