*New rule of thumb unlocked* : Unless you have a strong compelling reason to use a specific dowel, go for the helical/fluted ones. Great video, Suman. Thank you!

@asderven

2 ай бұрын

Strong compelling reason: dowels are not available here, making the simple dowels is my best option.

@RenaxTM91

2 ай бұрын

@@asderven Its not that hard to make some simple flutes tho if you need the strength. But most of the time you can just add another dowel.

@einsam_aber_frei

2 ай бұрын

I asked my wife what dowel she likes, and she likes it longer and thicker.

@asderven

2 ай бұрын

@@RenaxTM91 thank you, will try adding flutes myself with a carving knife, it doesn't have to be pretty. I'll see how the experience is like. Thank you for the suggestion.

@patrickday4206

2 ай бұрын

I like the old rule of thumb just don't beat your wife with anything bigger than your thumb

It sounds to me that, for a hobbyist with limited funds: Plain for flush trim. Fluted for hidden. Use the leftover cash for a good drill bit. Thank you 👍.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

exactly! great summary!

@filldev

2 ай бұрын

Nice summary!😊

@asderven

2 ай бұрын

Use the left over money to buy a domino later 😁

@disqusrubbish5467

2 ай бұрын

@@asderven Or a vacation in Hawaii...

Some of the best presentation and testing I've seen. Complete clarity in the methods and results. Appropriate amount of commentary. Clear graphics. Simple and effective analysis.

how have you only got 27.5k subscribers!??! every one of your vids is incredibly well researched, carried out, and informative. Bravo!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Thank you! There must be a glitch with KZread. I’m hoping the subscriber count gets fixed by end of the year with a few more videos posted 😄

@russellwheeler2760

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySuman yeah I reckon there's a 0 missing off the end of that!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

@@russellwheeler2760 that’s high praise 🙌

@SeaFanStudio

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySuman when you figure out the fix for that bug, please let me know 🤣

@brewtalityk

2 ай бұрын

it might be because, while interesting, these comprehensive comparison videos aren't entertaining or very useful. ProjectFarm is an example of how to do this in the best way on KZread per the algorithm

"Some women are into it." Haha. That killed me. Great presentation of great data, Suman. Much appreciated.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

2” is a perfectly adequate dowel size! Haha. Appreciate ya watching Aaron!

@awildschuetz1

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySumanI'll be sure and let my wife know. There's science to back it up now! 🤣

Extra credit for the thumbnail! Was blasting through my feed and immediately was drawn to the story...

Nice job, I especially appreciate the error bars on the plots. I use the miller dowels for fastening edging which can be thin, the cap of the dowel is stronger than just glue would be. The idea behind the dowels with the vertical grooves is that the grooves are made by compressing the wood. The moisture in the glue causes the wood to expand, filling the hole. This should make for a tighter fit.

I suspect the difference in shear stress between the different sizes in the first test is due to the fact that wood is an inconsistent material with layers of different density grain. The smaller dowels might not get as much bite on the layers of grain. The larger ones exposed more layers and started to plateau to the actual shear strength of the glue.

Thanks for great video and test very useful. A note on the fluted dowel, the dowels should have been compressed when they are made, so they should expand when the glue is in contact with them making them stronger while still easy to insert and allow glue squeeze out.

Your statistical approach has been improving over time! I love how you're not removing outliers anymore, and are showing the error bars on the graphs-- that's super informative! Kudos to you! One thing that could be improved is if you actually specified what the error bars were (for example is it SEM, variance, standard deviation, or a 95% or other % confidence interval? all of these will have different interpretations). Going a step further, a statistical significance test would be important to see which differences can't be attributed to random error-- I could help with that.

@BigBenC1991

2 ай бұрын

Based on the way he spoke of them, those error bars, as you call them, are the range of the failure loads he got from each of the 5 tests. The main bar graph bar is just the average of those results.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Great question. They are SEM. You’re right- I probably should do signifcance but worry I’d need to realistically double my sample size to get meaningful information. Which would be difficult to do at my current pace and available time.

@jonathonbaron2914

2 ай бұрын

I only just came across this video and your channel, so knowing nothing (yet!) about your background in statistics or computation, I’d recommend 95% approximate confidence intervals (which, in my field at least, is basically the default for error bars). Approximate 95% CI bounds are easily computed as mean +/- 1.96*SE. Alternatively, bootstrapped confidence intervals are my preference-just take the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the bootstrap replicates of the mean. They should be similar enough for these purposes, but I like the bootstrap.

@jonathonbaron2914

2 ай бұрын

Significance testing between estimates can be useful, but then you’re welcoming complexity when you get a difference that’s, like, significant at the .065 level, but not .05. Technically not significant, but you’re ostensibly dealing with small samples, and relatively high variance, so I’d say that’s probably actually significant and just low-n.

I think the best part of these tests is the sheer amount of force it takes. No matter what you use, its going to be strong enough. Unless you have a dance party on that coffee table. The domino has a lot of other value relating to alignment in more than one axis. Its definitely a luxury though.

@astronemir

2 ай бұрын

Not really. Leverage is a bitch. My kids can break any of these if I build it wrong.

I love how thorough you are ! Great video as always

One of the best videos I’ve seen on dowel strength. Thank you.

You've become my favourite KZread woodworking channel. Not only are you an excellent story-teller but your measurement and data analysis makes your content uniquely of the highest quality. While there are many channels that can provide an entertaining story, yours has that AND statistical analysis! Finally... Information I can have confidence in. Awesome!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

These videos are truly a labor of love and it means the world to me when folks like you recognize and appreciate them. Thank you for being here and thank you for watching!

Thanks for doing these tests--well done, well thought out, and well-delivered!!

I just finished a major project using many many dowels and your video totally justified my choice of using dowels. Thanks so much, truly a superb test video. (as usual)

Another incredible video Suman 🙌🏼 I enjoy the statistical analysis combined with the passion of woodworking. I found myself watching it again because it was so entertaining and informative. Thank you for all of the work you do!

Thanks for all the effort and analysis!

Dude I continue to enjoy your videos and love the cameos in other KZreadrs videos too 😂 Keep it up… you should have way more subscribers. Criminally underrated.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Haha the cameos are fun. As you might imagine, the woodworking content creator community are very open an, friendly, accessible folks.

Great information and a tremendous effort to make this informative video…. Much respect my man!!! I had to share this video with my subscribers

Nice job! Very interesting and useful. And well organized and presented. Thank you!

Fantastic as always Suman! Thank you for your work!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Thanks dude! I'll know I will have made it when I'm in one of your parodies.

Love these vids, hope your channel blows up!

That's awesome, thanks Suman!

Great work, Suman. This mostly reinforced my priors, but I was surprised by the surface area-normalized pull-out force results.

I love your videos, you get to the point and deliver great information!

❤ I appreciate your hard work and dedication. Thank you from England. ❤

very informative tests Suman!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Thanks Blake! Can’t wait to see your shark with laser beam 😂

@SeaFanStudio

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySuman that shark is amazing!

Love these videos!! Thanks for all your hard work!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Appreciate you watching. Thank you!

Love me some dowel joinery. Thanks for the great video!

Wow!! Thank you Suman! While you are expanding on what we all know, you have opened a new world of creating better joinery.. Always love your content! Always looking forward to what you come up with next! keep up the great work!! Love ya!!!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

I am so appreciative of folks like yourself who finds this type of content interesting! Thank you for watching and engaging via comments

another great video! clear and to the point. I was shocked by the dominos lack of performance near the end but it once again proves that regular dowels have been used for a long time for a reason

This video is just one more example of why I subscribe to this channel!

What a great video! I use fluted dowels because they’re cheap and easy to find, but I was always worried they weren’t as strong. Now I don’t have to worry anymore. Thanks!

Great job, thank you for putting together this test. A lot of thought & effort!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

A lot of effort indeed. Glad you liked it!

Good testing procedure. Thanks 😊

Great video, love the attention to detail and adherence to the scientific method.

Thank you for your complete and precise testing. Subscribed!

Great video. Thank you.

A very fair test. Thank you.

Great video! A lot of very interesting stuff to unpack. Keep it up!

fantastic! thanks so much for this.

Nice job, I really like your approach

Really good analysis!

I thoroughly enjoyed this video! Watching them snap was super satisfying!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Thanks brotha!

@FrankDoesIt

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySuman absolutely!

Thx a lot. Great show

Fantastic & insightful video Suman! Loved it. Had a lot of fun making my guesses every time you were about to show a chart and ended up mostly wrong 😂 (except the shear strength test… but that was a great twist reveal)

This is a really great video. Cool stuff!

Lots of great info! Thanks!

Suman, any machinist can admire that beautiful blanchard ground steel, cool video!

Best woodworking channel on youtube. I hope you get loads of success.

@PM-wt3ye

2 ай бұрын

Best is a strong word... So far its lots of comparison... Not bad at all, but the BEST!?

@user-md1vm2np3r

2 ай бұрын

As a scientist, I really appreciate the experiments being run in triplicate and that you report standard deviations, which most do not. Most scientific woodworking channel and therefore best.

Love your videos! Super interesting.

Thank you for this great video.

Fantastic work! Thanks so much. :)

Thanks for the effort

Awesome video, I love content like this! You deserve more subs 😊

Excellent video, thank you so much!

wow!!!! I love your tests keep up your great work thank you

That was a lot of work to make all those joints and then break them. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing!

Great video.

Great job testing!

I like the idea with the wax paper to rule out differences in the wood structures.

These tests are genius. I would never think to eliminate other variables with wax paper and perfectly machined blocks

Man I love Suman's videos!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

and I love you right back! Thank you for watching!

Excellent. That is all, thank you.

I like the miller dowels for making drawers, quick and easy to drill the holes in the plywood and pound them home, I could use regular dowels but the millers allow for better to be a bit off with my holes and not blow out the side of the drawer

Fantastic video! Thank you for the information. I really appreciate it. It has given me more confidence to use dowels instead of spending money on the Festool tool.

Haha, awesome as always, Suman! Thank you! 👍

Cool video - The best part for me was the difference in tensile strength and shear strength between a pair of dowels and a pair of dominos. Shows you must consider the grain direction versus load direction to get strong joints.

Good work!

I've used Miller dowels because they are more than strong enough for my applications and they just seem cool. Also, I normally have time to play. I don’t think i would choose them for production work.

I absolutely love your careful, consistent approach to verifying/debunking common assumptions. Data rules!!! Any chance of testing dowel-pinned tenons (standard tenon; dowel driven perpendicular through center of tenon and mortised housing piece)? Is 1/8 enough, or does 1/4 provide relevant improvement, and how does that compare to either standard mortise/tenon, floating tenon, or dowel-only joints? Intuitively, it seems like any pin at all would add substantial strength, but it could well be irrelevant at the break-point. I know, a lot of work, but I'm really curious how pinned tenons compare to unpinned at whatever resolution/variance makes sense to you.

For visible dowels I drill undersized holes and use screws and glue to make the joint, then later pull the screws and re-drill for dowels.

@jasonjayalap

2 ай бұрын

this is so you dont have to clamp?

@ehRalph

2 ай бұрын

@@jasonjayalap I definitely have clamps, and sometimes just to bypass clamping, other times for awkward, hard to reach repairs or deep field laminations, thinking back, it’s more of a process, ie pre-drill or drill-press the outer holes first, slightly over sized 5/32 3/16, then positioning and drill inner hole 1/8 for drywall screws (maybe even with a clamp or painters tape for alignment) -then using 1” fender washers or rubber grommets under the screw head to spread force. But yesterday I did a big glueup the old fashioned way- no screws- just lots of clamps hahahaha

Love how you do your analysis, and I really appreciate the time and expense you put in to making this as comprehensive as possible. There will always be things people can look at as variables, especially with wood, like grain direction, distance of the grain lines between different wood segments etc. and in my opinion that's simply nit picking. What you've done is provided as fare of a test as you could and let the results speak for themselves. In closing, I don't see myself spending thousands of dollars on a tool where results that I'm looking for can be attained for pennies on the dollar.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Thank you! Deciding what to test and what to exclude based on limited time and resources is one of the tricky parts of making these videos because there is always more that can be done. I appreciate you acknowledging that. Thanks!

You have to consider by the sheer strength that the Festool Domino was the only dowel who didn't break, because they are way stronger than all the other ones. The wood broke at the Domino`s samples not the dowel itself. This makes the Domino the strongest Joint! Just the cause of the thickness of the wood let it seem to be the weakest joint.

Helical and fluted dowels are compressed a bit during manufacture, so there's a little more wood fiber there than a plain dowel for the same volume.

Great job! Thank you for sharing

Nicely done review. I switched from dowels to the Domino primarily for the speed and speed related to cut lineup accuracy. Fancy dowel jigs are expensive, and still don't consistently align the holes without NASA 'landing-on-the-moon' concentration. It got sooooo tedious. I tried a Domino at one of the woodworking stores. Sold. Not a second thought required. Still though, dowels work.

Hi there, when you are using a larger dowel you not only have a larger area for glue but also more frictional force from the increased area. Another factor can be that the larger dowel is easier to push into a hole with tighter tolerances without breaking, which intern increases your frictional forces even more. It's similar methods used in engineering for bolts.

Love this test. I’ve long wondered about dominos vs dowels for this type of joint. I’m honestly surprised that the domino beat the bunch for tensile strength because it has the least amount of the fabled “long grain to long grain” glue area. It has the most total surface area, but because the slightly roomy mortise, almost all of the glue surface is the end grain of the wood piece to long grain of the domino. Goes to show that End grain to long grain, like in a simple butt joint, has plenty of strength. Most of us fortunate enough to do so will continue using dominos because they’re fast, easy, and, most importantly, aid in assembly.

Good tests!

Very interesting test, thank you! I'm kind of wondering how these stack up to screws and nails now to be honest :)

Thanks for the methodical testing. My understanding is that in the long term, dowels expansion and contraction is an issue, particularly when a different species than the work peice. I'd be interested in seeing how beadlock stacks up.

The reference value of the glued area without a dowel would be interesting. This power would have to be subtracted from the other values.

In the space you used 2 dominos, you could have also used 3 plain, helical or fluted dowels. A useful test progression would be to show the change in strength going from 2 dowels to 3.

Interesting video. I normally use the plain dowel though I do have some fluted ones. They both seem to work just fine for my use. I have wondered though if you could 3d print a dowel and how well it would work.

@MattWeber

2 ай бұрын

You lose a bit of strength since some of the strength is the expansion of both of the dowel and the part surfaces expanding with the glue. A 3d print will remove one of those expansions. It also becomes dependant on print quality, material and orientation (obviously print them along their longest axes for best strength). CNC KItchen's strength tests would be the best comparison for a dowel since he does similar tests on 3d prints.

Great subject and as always well designed tests. It wonders me that the long grain side of the dowel connection seems to always plop, while I would think this part of the dowel connection is the most strong for glueing compared to the crossed grain connection. Or do I see it wrong? Anyway, looking forwards to the next video!

Thank you, loving it 👍

You so smart. Informative and interesting, as usual. Nice work!

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

I gotta work bent lamination into a video in the future 😂

5:00 haven't finished the video but to answer your question about the dropoff of dowel performance to size ratio as you went up, I'm going to bet that if you scaled the wood the dowels were joining with the size of the dowel it would look more linear. The compressive force placed on the sides of the dowel by the wood itself goes down as your dowel size goes up.

4:50 All dowel/holes have same tolerance, but the tolerance is less forgiving in the small dowels. This may be the reason strenght/surface is better in the larger ones.

Fantastic test! Thanks again Suman. Please keep up the great work 👍👍

I always suspected that the domino dowel removed too much wood and would weaken the joint in some way. Of course it is still plenty strong. Thank you for all your hard work. Great video!

Perfect, keep it up !

Nice video, good to see this content. Its interesting, in the shear strength testing, the wood gave before the domino, do to the width. And as you say, it would have made a difference had the dowles and dominoes been in the middle of the board.

I want to see more tests with the domino, as well as a test where the shear strength is being tested pulling the opposite direction, so the dowels would have to break before the boards.

Here is the elephant in the room : all the joints shown are strong enough. Pick whatever solution you prefer, which may depend on budget vs "speed and convenience" whether you want the dowel to show through, etc. Run with it.

@WoodcraftBySuman

2 ай бұрын

Agreed. That’s exactly what I indicated at the end of the video.

@jvgauthier

2 ай бұрын

@@WoodcraftBySuman I should have listened to the last few minutes before commenting I guess :)

Solid info. Well done and well presented and leaves me thinking “well…..?” on a possible Domino purchase 😊

Huh, really interesting. I've been "flutting" my plain dowels by slightly and repeatedly crushing them with the serrated part of my pliers. Kinda wonder now if the crushing action is making it stronger or weaker. It certainly helps it squeeze out the glue.