Drilling vertical stock that is too long for a a drill press

Hello All,

I found my now referred to on eBay as "Vintage" Stanley No:59 Dowelling Jig. It still had a No:6 drill guide attached to it out of the six different sized drill guides. Fate was smiling down on me as the size dowel I decided to buy the previous day was 9.5 mm. Lucky for me 9.5 mm dowel is the same as the No: 6 drill guide for the No: 59 dowelling jig!

I also found someone online selling new old stock guides separately and I am sure each one is more than what I paid for the whole kit new off the shelf ... when it was not referred to as a "vintage" tool. Anyway, another one of my finds was someone online had taken a photograph of the No: 59 Dowelling Jig's Instruction sheet. After a quick copy and save, I read through the instructions. Then I followed the instructions to the letter on how to set the jig up. To test the product I got an offcut the same thickness of my intended job. Following the instructions and lining the No:6 drill guide line with half the width of the timber should bring the drill exactly half-way in the timber. It did not. Then I remembered why the kit had sat in the back of some shelf for the amount of time something takes to become "vintage". Following the instructions the last time I used the kit produced off-centred timber and caused a step up between the boards I had dowelled together. They should have fitted flush with each other. It was a, "not happy, Jan" moment. I tried to count the times I moved house between first buying the jig and my finding it again. I lost count.

Today, I moved the drill guide a little down from the mark the instructions recommended and hand twisted the special dowel drill into the scrap. Then I swapped the jig to the other side and hand twisted the drill in. Nope, there were two holes instead of one. If the drill guide had been centred correctly then there should only be a single hole. I wound up moving the No:6 slide marker further up until swapping the jig both faces of the scrap piece of timber produced only a single hole.

I bought an old desk or study bench that I am repurposing into kitchen bench tops. The previous constructor only used glue and a couple of the desk boards had separated. I am dowelling and gluing them. Photographs of the job will be supplied once I make sure that my efforts to line up mid-point on the scrap timber accurately carry across to the real job. It is dressed-all-round pine timber that is 140 mm x 30 mm boards. It was an L-shaped study desk/bench that was 5 boards across for each leg of the L. I stripped off all the 'mahogany' stain and once it is all dowelled the tops will be coated with satin clear oil-based varnish.

Kind regards