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Dowels blew out on a plywood cabinet face, need a better joinery approach
Last Friday I was assembling a built-in for a client in Tacoma and my 5mm dowels just shredded the face panel, all 14 of them, because the plywood was a bit too thin and my alignment was off by maybe 2mm. I had to scrap the panel and recut it, which cost me an extra 3 hours and $40 in material. Has anyone switched to dominos or biscuits for this kind of thin plywood joint, or do you just stick with dowels and accept the occasional blowout?
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caseyfox8d ago
What was your clamping setup looking like when those dowels let go? If the face panel was flexing even a little during glue-up, that alone could cause the alignment to shift and blow out the holes. I have had way better luck with biscuits on thin plywood because they let the panel float a bit, but honestly the bigger fix for me was adding a caul or a backer board so the pressure is even across the whole joint. How thick was the plywood, and were you using a dowel jig or something self centering? Also worth asking, was the blowout happening on the drill side or the glue side?
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