I have a hard time cutting the wooden dowels to make them all the exact same size. What is an easy way to cut them? Also in another forum I heard people keep mentioning hollow dowels. What the hollow dowels and where do I buy them?

I love hollow dowels. I find the wooden ones too much of a pain in the neck to cut.

You can find them at Wal-mart, Michaels', Hobby Lobby, anywhere you can buy cake supplies, you should be able to buy plastic dowels.

They are big, plastic tubes - I put one in and then mark it and cut with serrated knife then cut the rest to the same size.

Hi, the hollow dowels I have used are made by Wilton. They are about 3/4 inch in diameter and are made of white plastic. You can cut them with a serrated knife. Very easy to use and very sturdy.

susan

I went to Lowe's and got a new pair of pruning shears to cut my wooden dowels. They are just a snap to cut. I can cut them much quicker than using a knife to cut the plastic ones.

Thanks ladies!!! So are the hollow dowels kind of like straws??

Yeah, imagine a HUGE straw lol. I wanna say they're the diameter of either a nickel or a penny. And MUCH sturdier than straws. They are sooooo sturdy....the only thing I use wooden dowels for anymore is to centrally dowel my tiered cakes.

i just do solid wood dowels and picked up a cheap pair of pruning shears at wal-mart this summer (garden section) and they cut it really easily!

I love the hidden pillars by wilton and since using them have not had any issues with a stacked cake.

I won't go back to anything else.

I like the hidden columns also. They are excellent for large heavy cakes. They also will fit the Wilton plates. I usually use them for over 4 tier cakes, and then graduate to the smaller plastic tubes for the smaller tiers. I don't care for the straw thing, and besides I was reading in one of Colettes books and she said that the straws are not for heavy cakes. The wooden dowels are OK in a pinch, but you do have to make sure there are no splinters on the ends, you can smooth them with sand paper or a file.

I too have a question about wooden dowels. I am making a cake for this weekend using 9x13, & 11x15 sheet cakes, and using the little plastic pumpkin treat thingys as my "columns" between the two. I am going to hot glue the top of the little pumpkin to the bottom of the cake board(using extra boards of course) and put wooden dowels under the bottom of the pumpkins into the 11x15 for my support. I bought 1/4" dowels to use, should I use a bigger dowel?

i only ever use 1/4" dowels... just more of them if it's needed