NGLJ
Member
If you happen to be making pens with a "wooden jacket", you need to make dowel inserts. The stock Hinze cutter arrives ready to make tenons. Dowels are just long tenons. Up until now if I wanted to make plastic inserts of a particular size, I turned down the insert. Then I got to thinking that the Hinze Tenon Cutter could do the job if it could cut longer tenons. The cutter comes with a 2" cutter holder. So, I made a 2.5" cutter holder. It happens that I did not have material the same width as the original, but carried on anyway. Not only did it extend the cut, but the extra width of the cutter holder cut with less vibration, giving a very clean cut, even on wood. BTW all of this is without the 6 MM rod in place since I did not want to drill the workpiece. The cutter is held in Rick's tailstock collet chuck, which makes it easy to advance with minimal slop. After cutting roughly half the dowel, I turned it around and cut the other half. Encouraged by the result, I made a set of cutters, including replacing the original - see attached. So far it has made dowel production so much easier and more accurate. As an experiment, with the 3" I am going to try making a 5" wooden blank into a dowel instead of turning it. I am sure the type of wood will have a bearing on how it performs.
