How I doweled my cabinet door parts together on sight for lack of a doweling kit:
1: clamp your wood exactly parallel to the edge of your work surface:
2. Using a square, draw some perpendicular lines about where the dowels should come:
3. Use a wood drill bit. Mark ½ of your dowel length on the drill with tape. This is how deep you should drill:
4. Using the tabletop and the lines as visual guide, carefully drill perpendicular until the edge of the tape. Use a point light to give clear shadows:
5. Insert doweling helper thingies into the holes you drilled:
6. Place your parts precisely next to each other:
7. Using a striking block, whack gently with a hammer. The thingies will mark your other part exactly where the corresponding holes should go:
8. Drill holes in the other part at the marks, same way as before (note square for reference shadow):
9. Dry-fit with dowels (suspense!):
10. Check if any of the holes need to be deepened:
11. When fit is satisfactory, fix the dowels with wood glue, clamp and let dry.
The purpose of this exercise; after IKEA discontinued their “Faktum” kitchen line and switched to different sized cabinets, I had to resort to assembling some extra doors for Faktum cabinets from leftover doors and drawer fronts to complete a kitchen in progress…
