Re: Craftsman Made Wooden Dogs for Round Dog Holes
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>Custom Wooden dogs, that work like the WorkMutt dogs, but more smoothly, are really easy to make. Start with a 3/4" round dowel stock. Cut off some sections about 2-1/2" long. Find some scraps of hard wood, about 2" square. Drill a 3/4" dia. hole somewhere near the center of each of them. Saw a kerf in the end of each dowel, about the depth of the block of wood. Split some wedges with a wide chisel. Glue and wedge a block onto the end of each dowel. When the glue is dry, plane the top of the wedge and the end of the dowel flush with the top of the block.
You should make several, with different thickness square blocks, to match (or at least not exceed) the thickness of the stock you are holding between them. Also, I have found it helps to put the hole for the dowel off center, so you can rotate the dog for fine adjustments in stock width or length. Don't worry a lot about getting the faces of the dogs square because you will probably want to modify some of them eventually to fit curved stock. If you get the blocks a little too thick, don't worry about it. They are self correcting.
These work on the top of the bench, in the front and end faces of the shoulder and tail vise, on the front face of the bench, on the board jack, in the WorkMutt, and in custom holes drilled in the faces of large hand screws.
I store my extras when I'm not using them in the bottom holes of my board jack.
If, OTOH, you want to live dangerously, you can buy 3/4"-10 NC by 3" long hex head machine bolts for cheap from places like Fazzios, MSC, McMaster-Carr, Bolt Depot, ACE Hardware, etc. that make fine "junk-yard" dogs.
