In the past I've made dowels with my router by using a round over bit and square stock and making 4 (or more) passes with the stock which ends up with a pretty nice dowel. The limitation was I could only make dowel sizes that I had a matching round over bit for. After a bit of searching to see if there was a way to make dowels without a lathe, I discovered this site. It looked simple enough so I decided to give it a try. The first few attempts weren't pretty, but I quickly got everything adjusted and things came out real nice. Some notes:

• Use your jointer! Make sure your stock is straight! If you don't, you'll get a lot of vibration when spinning the stock through the jig. A lot of vibration!
• If you see burning, you're either turning the stock too fast, or not pushing it through the jig fast enough.

Since I was making 3/4" dowels, the idea of chucking up the stock in my drill wasn't an option. I also didn't like the idea of putting a screw in the end since it might not stay, it'd be hard to chuck in the drill, and if I did get it chucked, I couldn't just pull the drill away if I needed to set it down for whatever reason. Instead I used a 12-point socket on my drill. For the size stock I made, a 24mm socket fit the end perfectly. There's a bit at the end that I can't turn and I have to back the whole dowel out, but that's no big deal.