5

Found these in an old compartment box of chipboard screws that came to us from the adjacent household clearance business.

On a cylindrical base or shaft sits a conical, rounded tip. Overall length is about 2-2.5 mm, real tiny. They're attracted by magnets. Battered as the sides look, the base circle surfaces are reasonably smooth.

Google Lens mainly just gives me cone snails and pencils. I'm reminded of a center punch, but the items seem hard to fix in a handle when some of them have an even shorter base than in the picture.

tiny metal tips

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    Looks like one is brass and the other is aluminum or steel? Can you confirm what they are made of. A picture of the " cylindrical steel base" might provide a clue. Commented Dec 17, 2024 at 15:03

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

They are called dowel markers, dowel centers, or dowel pins and are used in cabinetry for marking where to place dowels/pegs for joining pieces of wood. Usually they are found in sets of varying diameter for different dowel sizes. Yours appear to be handmade and/or likely are antiques.

How they work: You would have holes pre-drilled on one of the sides to join. Stuff those into the holes pointy side out and then align it with the other piece. A tap with a mallet and you have center marks for the drilling the holes on the other piece of wood, guaranteed to line up perfectly. Nice!

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks. My shop head is a German carpenter and didnt' recognize the things. Handmade would explain the lack of ledge to prevent disappearing into the bore. Can only find such mm-scale items for model building, do you consider them common in carpentry? Presumably with steel pins? Commented Jan 10 at 16:33
  • 1
    Yes. Will probably see them more in woodworking than general carpentry. Contemporary ones are mass produced, sizes range larger and have ledges like you would expect. Search for dowel markers or dowel centers, dowel pins winds up hitting the connecting pins. Commented Jan 10 at 17:49

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.