I had to make some dowels to fit some screws and I wanted them to match the native pecan I was using. Home Depot's lack of pecans meant I had to find another solution. I bought it after seeing a positive review on YouTube and it was worth it. It does a good job of quickly making small batches of dowels from whatever wood you intend to use, as long as you have a good drill for it. I haven't used it to make carpentry dowels yet, but I will soon and expect it to work well for that too.