I understand the concept of cutting the dowels, but how do I know how many I will need for any given cake?
If you are making a double layer sheet 12 x 18 do you dowel?
BTW how the heck do you flip those suckers over to stack them after they cool? They are too heavy for me to flip or slide successfully and they break. Any tips?
I have heard using 1 dowel for every 2 inches of cake above (3 dowels for a 6" round) , or even 1 dowel for every 1 inch of cake above (6 dowels for a 6"). I usually go somewhere in the middle of that.
If you are making a double-layer 12x18 with nothing stacked on top of it, then you would not need to dowel.
As far as flipping a big cake..it is tricky, but it helps 1) if the cake is completely cooled, and 2) you are flipping from and to a surface bigger than the cake so the cake is supported at all times. Hope I'm making sense! 
I use 4 dowels, no matter what the size of cake, but I also put a plastic plate between every tier.
Flipping a cake: Partially frozen cakes are easier to flip than non-frozen cakes. I put the cake on a cake board and it will easily slide from the board to the waiting cake. For some reason, it slides better from a cardboard than it does from a baking sheet.
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