Has anyone yet tried to use a PRU to slice a dowel rod in half along the rod? If so, on how narrow of a diameter dowel have you been able to successfully do this?
Splitting a dowel is a very difficult and inexact process using a regular saw, and it will be great if the GF can handle this well. It would allow me to make rounded trim that is flat on the glue side.
I haven’t done it yet but if I can find one around here I’ll try it. I think it could work quite well. If I can do a mitered cut in a specific place, I should be able to split a dowel.
Thanks. I suspect you will need to tape it down from underneath to keep it from moving as the cut gets closer to the end.
It might depend how precisely you want it split. I dont’ think it would be an issue to make supporting cradles with the corresponding radius. You might not even have to worry about double sided tape to hold it place unless there was a large amount of interior stress in a some of the thicker dowels.
Haha–should have seen this before I did it. For my first attempt the piece shifted while being cut due to the air assist.
I didn’t have a dowel but I did have a piece of 1/8" square walnut rod. Here’s the Before (stuck down to the paper this time):
After (didn’t get it centered very well, you’d want to use a jig):
Here’s the split piece:
It seems like 1/8" is very doable as long as the rod has no bends in it. Probably you could go smaller.
Thanks for testing this, cyn
Two small pieces of aluminum angle turned and placed side by side to form an upside down “W” will create a V shaped cradle that will support, and automatically center a dowel of any size. Might still need some fixturing to keep them from spreading apart, like pins/dowels stuck through the honeycomb grid.
edit Now that I see @cynd11’s photos, stacks of neo magnets directly on both sides of the dowel should hold it well too.
nah. just a couple/few hold-ups against the dowel to keep it from rolling. magnets are probably fine.
This should work best with a jig. I’ve been thinking about cutting some dowels to length but didn’t think about the splitting of it. My pencil engraving jig could be adapted to that rather well. Will test it out when the queue is free. Would be a good test for the jig.
That is just an interesting question and begs to be answered.
