I’ve always found it hard to buy longer wooden dowel rods locally and paying through my nose for international shipping from the US or UK was not an option I would consider.
Luckily, I found a way to buy cheap wooden dowel rods online, up to 1″ thick. The trick is to look at products that are basically wooden dowel rods. For example, rolling pins. These are just round rods used to roll dough.
You can also find some good options if you search for model-making materials on AliExpress. As a woodworker making small objects, the model-making universe will have a lot to offer!
The picture above is 20mm (approx 3/4″) and 6mm (approx 1/4) dowel rods made from birch, measuring 30cm and 45cmm respectively. The 3/4″ dowels were $7.50 for a pack of 5, while the 1/4″ dowel rods were $2.25 for a pack of 5.
You can get these birch dowel rods from AliExpress here.
There were no 1″ wood dowels in the model-making category, but the bakery section was full of rolling pins that fit the bill.
The picture above is 1″ Beech rolling pins I purchased for $0.50 each, and some of them had some pretty beautiful spalting. I wanted to re-make my wooden vise handle with these dowel rods.
They turned out to be slightly oversized, so I had to mount them on the lathe and trim down to slightly under 1″ in order to fit nicely into my Yost woodworking vise.
However, at just $0.50 each these were a steal!
I’ve since made some really nice rasp handles on my wood lathe, and they were really good quality.
Finding these cheap wood dowel rods was the deal of the year for me. I can even use them for making pens, toothpick holders and other small turnings on my lathe.
