If you want to try through drilling with a little more success you can try this. It might not look like much, but for a good number of years I used this drilling jig to make lots of through drilled dowel, broomstick and rake handle plugs. Works even better with square stock, but I had no lathe at the time and was not about to start whittlin'. This was used with a hand drill only untill I finally added a drill press with dowel center to the mini cave. It only takes 3 pieces of pine. Place the stock into the corner and clamp in place. Drill about 1/2 way and flip being sure to keep the same sides of the stock in the same position. You can add a strip to the botton so that you can clamp it into a vise. It is not fool proof, but I made lots of through drilled 6 and 7 inch plugs (5 inch plugs were easy 8 inch impossible) as well as some back breaking rakes and brooms...they'd have been great for the 7 dwarfs
