The Technique of FURNITURE MAKING

BORING SOCKETS/DOWEL HOLES

Any expedient should be adopted to ensure truly vertical boring of the sockets. If done by hand, using a Russell Jenning's pattern dowel - bit in a bit - or arm-brace, help should be enlisted in sighting for the upright. Drilling at an angle always presents problems, for the wings of the bit tend to follow the grain, and an expedient adopted in the writer's own workshops for precision compound angle drilling was to fix the work either horizontally or vertically, thread the spindle of a 1/3 hp (0.25 kW) electric motor for a 1/2 in (12.5 mm) capacity Jacob's chuck (or use a hand drill), mount the motor on a baseboard running between wood guide rails securely fixed at the correct compound angle, and feed the motorized bit forward to the correct socket

and the work fed forwards. Methods such as this might appear to be unnecessarily complicated for a relatively simple operation, but with a dozen or more holes to drill much wasted time and labour can be avoided, and the motor with its threaded shaft is always a useful power source. A home-made horizontal dowel-boring machine is illustrated in 112. This included rise and fall and lateral sliding table, depth stop, etc. assembled by an engineer friend from a scrap - metal milling-machine bought from a local dealer's yard, and using the motor already described.