Review on Jessem Model 08350 Dowelling Master by Alif Wills

I assemble cabinets and furniture like an amateur in a small home workshop. I've always enjoyed using dowels for carpentry work, but I've always been frustrated by my inability to get precise alignment with other fasteners I've tried - so much so that I usually justify other methods (*pocket screws*) myself know dowel much stronger. After finding excuses not to use dowels on projects, I seriously considered buying a Festool Domino or looking at a Mafell Duo dowel. I have no doubt that Festool and Mafell make excellent products, but I gasped at the prospect of paying that much for a tool for a small home workshop. After endless research, I finally decided to try the Jessm jig. After testing, Jessem's device finally seems to be "the one" that solves the problems I've had over the years. There are a number of features that set this unit apart from others I have used in the past: 1. Strong, durable construction. This thing is like a tank and every dot on it is square and true. The guard is ideally at a 90 degree angle to the drill guides. The mounting pins fit perfectly and allow holes to be cut along the edge of the front of long panels. I've found that other attachments I've used tend to "wiggle"/wiggle when I use them. Not Jessem - he's reliable as a rock. Also, I was initially concerned about aligning the template on parts of the body where it would be difficult to find and align the center line, but I found that using the index pin as a "side stop" worked fine, similar to the Mafell Duo-Dowler There is an index stop that snaps to the edge of the workpiece on the underside of the machine, or simply line up the side of the template with the side of the panel by placing the gauge on a ruler or even with your finger check alignment.2. The fence is long and provides a large area for attaching the clamps. It also seems relatively well balanced. so I don't get frustrated trying to attach the clamp. My first dowel installer was one of the relatively inexpensive drill blocks attached to a perspex fence. It worked well enough until about the fifth time I used it and it fell off the board after I released the clamp and smashed the railing on the floor (it was very heavy and unbalanced). I then used another reasonably good jig (stainless steel and milled body) but had a lot of trouble holding it securely as it only has two small clamping points and one of those points was almost always outside of the narrow blanks you need to attach to when creating tinkering with the device to make it work. While the Jessem is sturdy, I found it to be relatively well balanced so I don't have to constantly worry about it falling to the ground, and the long stop gives me plenty of clamping options. Jessem's System for Joining Shelves: Drill dowels into the shelf's board, then find the center line of the shelf on the board, measure 2 inches from the center, and use the shelf itself with the dowel installed as a guide for alignment. This is a brilliant idea that eliminates a lot of the frustrations I've had with other systems.3. There aren't many nasty things to deal with. I have a different fixture that requires constant moving, readjusting, and tightening of gaskets, bolts, and washers, which has often caused me to find excuses as to why other carpentry methods were "good enough" rather than a dowel clamp for projects to use. The Jessem Jig consists of only a few basic parts and does not require constant adjustment to function properly. And if you need to remove the stopper, it's just one screw and you're done. A point to add here: There are several reviews that mention the problems associated with trying to align the device with the centerline of the device. When using a jig, I generally don't have to use the center line. Instead, I use either the side of the jig or the stop pin as a stop to align it with the side of the workpiece. As long as you're joining two edges that are flush with the front (e.g. screwing in pins to create a track and stylish door, or joining cabinet frames) I wouldn't bother with a center line as it has potential - doesn't matter how accurate you're trying to be - introduce an error that wouldn't exist if a physical connection was used. As already mentioned, the index pin works flawlessly in this respect, since the processing of the index pin in the drill guides is very precise. Overall I am very happy with Jessem's device and would like to start with this one. I could save a bunch of bucks (in fact, with all the money I've spent on other systems, I could probably buy a Mafell dowel, well, almost).