Dowel

The dowel is a cylindrical shape made of wood, plastic, or metal.

Typically, the mechanism is open-ended, with material guides at the machine's entry and exit to enable fabrication of continuous dowel rods of unlimited length.

If no provision is made to relieve the hydraulic pressure of air and glue, hammering the dowel home or clamping the joint can split the wood.

An old solution to this problem is to plane a flat on the side of the dowel; some sources suggest planing the flat on the rough stock before the final shaping of the round dowel.

[1] The word dowel was used in Middle English; it appears in Wycliffe's Bible translation (circa 1382–1395) in a list of the parts of a wheel: "...and the spokis, and dowlis of tho wheelis..."[10]