IZM

"The Dowelmax drilling jig is the most versatile, accurate and fool proof joinery tool we have in our shop!"
  -Mike.

                                      Dowelmax the Preferred Dowel Jig for Hendrik Varju,

                                                   Fine Furniture Designer/Craftsman

                                                             Working with Plywood

Hendrik Varju operates a fine furniture design studio in Erin, Ontario, Canada where he also teaches the art of fine furniture building and numerous woodworking skills. He also produces the most detailed series of instructional woodworking DVDs we have ever seen. His newest production, called Working with Plywood , runs for over 11 hours spread out over a 5-DVD boxed set.

Hendrik has been a long time fan and user of our Dowelmax jig, telling us in the past that it has revolutionized the way he makes dowel joinery in his workshop. We were thrilled to recently find out that Hendrik featured Dowelmax in his latest DVD production, Working with Plywood . We have looked at the DVD and seen how incredibly detailed it is, taking viewers through a number of skills required to successfully work with plywood. Hendrik says he uses our Dowelmax to make dowel joinery between cross-rails and gables on all his veneered plywood projects and he takes you through the steps in his video. For woodworkers who have yet to master the specialized skills involved with plywood projects, we highly recommend Hendrik's new video, Working with Plywood . See http://www.passionforwood.com/dvds.htm for more information and a list of Hendrik's other titles.

Marcello Designs

J&M W.W.

Plan sorter for Engineering office constructed by John and Colin of J&M Woodworks. John and Colin have been two of our best customers since 2002.

Dear Jim and Mike,

I have received and used the DowelMax jig I recently ordered and am very impressed. Every thing went very smooth and you can feel the quality of the jig as you use it. As I discussed with you before ordering, I received a contract to build 6 interior 1 3/8” doors made of Poplar and to be painted.

The design was specified to be plain styles and rails with grooved panels. I have router bits to make doors, but they all mill a profile as well as making the groove. Dowels seemed to be the best way to construct these doors, but I tend to "over-build”, so I figured I needed a lot of dowels to prevent failure! I ended up putting 5 in the top, 4 in the lock, and 8 dowels in the 10” bottom rail. That made for 17 dowels in each style and a real nightmare if things did not line up exactly!! THANKS to the accuracy of the DowelMax, out of the 204 dowels involved, I had ZERO problems with alignment. I used TiteBond II Extend glue, which gave me 20 minutes open time and allowed the entire door to be assembled in one session.

I began the layout by using the top of the style for the top rail, and then measuring from the top of the style 40 ¼” to the top of the lock rail, and 70” to the top of the bottom rail. This, of course, had to be done with a really sharp pencil!!! I used a double row of dowels and I designed the dowel placement so the indexing pin supplied with the DowelMax could be used to move to the next set of holes in each rail. I used 1/8” and ½” spacers to get the two rows.

I am posting the pictures I took during construction on my web site under the section "Other”. Here is the link to the web page.

Franker Enterprises Photo Gallery

Thanks again for a superior product!

Terry Franker, Pres.