Dowels are a great way to join parts, for instance a leg to rail assembly like I've got here on this small project, plenty strong for what I'm doing here and fairly easy to do. But what you do have to be careful about is the glue application. It's really such a good fit between the dowel and the hole that if you get over zealous with the glue, if you just pour it in there, what can happen is that it simply won't allow the dowel to sit there you get hydraulic pressure acting against the dowel preventing the joint from closing. Or even worst, what can happened as you are determined to close that thing. squeeze it with a clamp, there can be so much pressure, it actually cracks your material. So here’s a great way that I found to get a nice, uniform coated glue inside that dowel hole.

I'm going to start by just getting a puddle of glue here on a piece of scrap. And then I'm going to use a que tip in the glue, it's going to give me a great control over getting the glue inside that hole all the way to the bottom a nice uniform film painted on the inside of the dowel hole. As soon as I have one whole line, one set of holes is lined I want to go ahead and insert those dowels and then we’ll just keep working our way all the way around the stool. But it's a little bit open like that don’t worry about it just allow the clamps to close in. But now you can go ahead and line the next set of holes until you got you whole project assemble. Q-tip makes a great way to make sure you have just the right amount of glue inside this dowel holes.