At left, a 3/8" dowel maker in use.
Unlike other dowel makers, these cut the wood by slicing the wood with a sharp knife cutting tangential to the surface, not by scraping like a lathe. The knife is curved to initially cut more aggressively, then curves away to take shallower and shallower cuts as the dowel progresses through the dowel maker, resulting in smooth and precise dowels while requiring minimal drill power to make them. These dowel makers can be held in one hand while spinning the stock with a small 12-volt drill.
Because so little set-up is required, rather than making a batch of dowels for later use, you can just keep it in a drawer and make dowels as needed. Just cut some square stock of the right size and spin it through your dowel maker.
A small drill with a 3/8" chuck is sufficient, but the 1/2" and 5/8" sizes require a drill with a 1/2" chuck.
Spare knives are available if you want one. The tangential cutting action means the blade is pushed straight into the wood, minimizing wear on the blade, though hard knots very soft wood can pull on the blade and tear out part of the balde edge. The knives are cut from utility knife blades, so you could also make your own replacement blades. There is some variation in utility knife blades, but if you order a blade with the dowel maker, it will be from the same batch of blades with exactly the same blade edge geometry.
I also have square drivers available to spin the square stock with a drill.
For the 5/8" size, a driver is necessary.
For the 3/8" size, you can put the 3/8" square stock into a 1/2" drill chuck,
or you can round one end of your stock by manually spinning it into the dowel
maker like you would use a pencil sharpener, then putting the round end you
just made in the drill chuck.
The drivers are made of wood, not as strong as metal, but these dowel makers don't need a lot of torque to cut dowels.
I haven't made drivers for the 1/4" and 5/16" dowel makers as it's just as easy to put the square stock into the drill chuck of a small hand drill.
Sorry for the delay, it took me until Oct 13 2026 to be confident that USA Tariffs were correct and arrival of USA test orders was confirmed. It turns out, dowel makers are only tariffed at 10% as they were in June.
Sorry, no European sales — Paperwork and registration costs make it uneconomical for small vendors like me to ship to Europe, even before shipping costs.
| Size | Dowel maker | Driver | Spare knife | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1/4"
|
|  Purchase link You can put the 1/4" stock | in a regular 10mm drill chuck
|  Purchase link 5/16"
|
|  Purchase link You can put the 5/16" stock | in a 1/2" drill chuck or use the 3/8" driver
|  Purchase link 3/8"
|
|  Purchase link
|  Purchase link
|  Purchase link 10 mm
|
|  Purchase link
|
| Purchase link 1/2"
|
|  Purchase link
|  Purchase link
|  Purchase link 5/8"
|
|  Purchase link (out of stock)
|  Purchase link
|  Purchase link |
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