click on photo to enlarge

You are bidding on a set of 3 plug cutters from Germany.  New, old stock.

• 5/8"
• 1/2" 
• 3/8"  

Click any photo to enlarge.

They all still had the protective plastic on the cutting edges when I found them; I peeled it off one for the picture.

PLUGS & DOWELS 101

OK, what we need to know is the difference between a dowel and a plug. 

A dowel is a long piece of birch wood turned down to a cylinder.  The tree grew up the dowel and the grain comes out the end.  Dowels are very strong for holding furniture together.  This is good.  When you use them for plugging a hole with an ugly metal fastener inside it, you see the endgrain, which holds too much stain and looks darker than the rest of the furniture, or from which the paint falls off, so it looks worse than the rest of the furniture.  Not good.  Also, who builds birch furniture?  It doesn't match.

With a plug cutter, you grab a board that matches the furniture and make a dowel-shaped plug, except that the top of the plug -- the part you have to live with -- is just like the rest of the board.



A plug is easier to shape and paint than a dowel, because the growth layers (the "grain") run the same way in the plug as in the rest of the furniture.





OK, I didn't do this plug, but if you don't keep a leaking aquarium on your table for 5 years and rust everything inside the hole, you can use plugs to hide fasteners.  For ex, we hung a mirror on the bedroom wall a couple of residences ago by making a pine frame for it and plugging the holes used to screw the frame to the wall -- a very clean look, we were pleased.  We cut the plugs from the wood left over from the frame, so we could never find them again.  Can't show you a photo, we sold it with the house.

Thanks for looking,
--jerry-VA