The one I got in the end
One drawback is that the drill guides don’t go all the way to the surface of the wood. There’s a recess which I think is there to collect chips? Combined with the relatively short guide, there’s enough wiggle room in the flutes of the drill bit to be a mm or so off in any direction.
The guage on the side is not super accurate, so I wouldn’t rely on it to get dowels exactly centered on the end of something. Rather you should just nominate an A and a B side for the joint and make sure the A side always goes into the same corner of the jig. As for alignment in the other axis, it doesn’t have an adjustable stop like the one in the OP. Instead I’d just rest the jig and the edge of the wood on a flat surface before tightening the clamp. Some technique required, but is well behaved in terms of keeping all its moving parts from moving when they’re not supposed to. I have drilled holes for ~170 dowels with it and all the joints went together flush. 7/10 points.
Um thanks for reading my tool review.
It’s definitely an upgrade from the cheap kind, but I feel like there’s probably a much more capable tool out there that makes completely consistent holes with 0.1mm accuracy every time. Probably last made out of a half tonne of cast iron in the 50s and now jealously guarded by elite cabinet makers.