Veritas Dowel & Tenon Cutter Review

Last month, as I was just about to buy some black walnut dowels for a project I was working on, Lee Valley came out with this dowel-maker for just under $20 CDN (16.50 USD). At $20 or less, how good could it be? I decided to chance it and purchased the 3⁄8" one.

The picture and description didn't do it justice. The unit weighs in at almost one pound (a hair under 14 ounces) and is very sturdily built. You can easily adjust it to make dowels slightly bigger or smaller. The dowels did need a bit of sanding, but that was easily done by chucking them in a drill and running them between folded sandpaper.

The blade was sharp right out of the box and instructions are included on how to sharpen it when needed. I believe it will easily pay for itself four or five times before the blade needs sharpening.

It's not an industrial tool that can zip out hundreds of dowels an hour, you do have to take your time and support long dowels, but it really works well.

Just make sure you adjust the blade before use. I was too eager to try it right out of the box—the blade was not set correctly and the out going dowel was slightly too big for the out going hole and jammed there. I had to remove the blade and tap out the dowel.

So far I've tried it on birch and black walnut, both with good results. Here is a picture of a black walnut dowel along with the loads of shavings produced.

Good tool, great price, I'm a happy camper. I think I will be asking Santa for the other sizes for Christmas.