Trick for tight fits around dowels

[Purplie]

For getting a very tight fit around a dowel, with less risk of breaking your wooden piece when you force it on, add some tiny teeth to your hole. You can use the Star tool in your vector editor. My teeth are usually 0.2mm–0.7mm, depending on application.

The points of the teeth are sacrificial and will get crushed. (This is for wooden pieces only, not acrylic.) It also compensates for the imprecision of the dowel’s shape.

It works well for delicate clock hands too. For those, I used teeth of 0.1mm.

[evansd2]

Oh slick. Reminds me of this gem from 2018:

Serrated tabs - no more glue

I love design but I don’t much care for assembly. Why should you have to deal with glue when your Glowforge can make the fasteners for you? I did some experimenting with serrated edges on tabs, and the results have been terrific. Proofgrade plywood is very consistent in thickness, so when using it, you can reliably depend on a design with serrated tabs to go together with a few taps from a rubber mallet. I’ve printed a single serrated design from Proofgrade maple, cherry, walnut, and I think…

[Purplie]

Yep, exactly the same principle.

[cynd11]

You are such a wonderful source of really useful information. You could teach a class!

[Xabbess]

That is a very cool tip, thank you! One that I believe I’ll find very useful.

[rvogt]

Thanks for all the tips!!

[ptodd]

I appreciate the tip! Thank you!

[kelley1]

what @cynd11 said!

[Curt9231]

Most excellent! Thank you.

[henryhbk]

I’m doing a project with a bunch of servos that have a similar pattern on the horn. Hadn’t thought about using the star tool (did the design in fusion 360).

[rpvalk]

Did you ever wonder why the professional dowels already have teeth? and it is not only for a tight fit but mainly to let the air and glue out in potholes….

[Purplie]

In addition, I believe those fluted dowels are designed to expand slightly when saturated with glue, to make the fit tighter.