re: Drilling Holes in Dowel ends

If I had to do that, I would superglue together a stack of several pieces of 3/4" plywood on top of each other, and on a drill press, drill out my diameter needed. Then I would use other dowels around the outside of the ply and drill several holes as close to the outer edge of the dowel as possible, and insert some dowels through them, to act as a cheap clamping, locator. Then you could pop the located plywood with the drilled out holes onto the end of the dowel. Then start drilling through the stacked plywood, and have a fairly good way to keep straight alignment using a hand drill, and a bit that fit your size needed.