Years ago, I came across hundreds of 1/8: X 5" birch dowels. I have only used them to stir paint so far. There must be other uses for these on the layout. They are very smooth and constant diameter or I could use them as logs.
Any thoughts?
I used some dowels (not sure of the size) that I did cut down for logs, it is a little time consuming as I did mine for a bulk head flat car so they are only as wide as the car, but it looks pretty good.
[:-^]
Hi bruce,
Things that come to mind are,
-supports for a loading dock.
-supports for overhead canopies.
-Pilings,
-lashed together vertically for an inner harbor seawall.
-lashed together horizontally for retaining walls.
-flat car loads.
-stir sticks, – Lol.
don’t chuck them, you will find a use for them. Especially after you would get rid of them…[:^)]
Johnboy out…
Bruce,
Those would be ~10.9" OD x 36.3’ long logs in HO. They’d also work for line poles. All you would need was the crossarms.
Tom
HI Blind Bruce, I happen to be looking at a 1/8th inch diameter dowel on my desk top. I had need for hundreds of short deciduous trees on the hill sides of my 24’x24’ garage loft layout. In HO scale 1/8th inch is about equivalent to 1ft. I cut a bunch of 1/8" dowels into 3-4" lengths and used a pencil sharpener to sharpen both ends. I mass stained bunches of the sharpened skewers. I cut various size circles from cheap blue furnace filters. I stripped them into three sheets and after pushing 4-5 on the skewer trunks, I sprayed them with spray adhesive and thensprinkle on either various shades of green, or various Fall colored WS Medium Turf (leaves) The photo shows the (incomplete) Fall season cluster of deciduous trees,(which I change with the seasons), on a “lift-out” access, in front of a hollow mountain that hides an N scale dogbone loop, as is seen in the second photo. The parallel part of the N scale loop is on a rough gray 2"x2", which has HO scale in front, and a low hills panorama of SceniKing behind it for forced perspective. Click on photos to enlarge. Bob Hahn 
Grampy has a great photo showing a use for them. They can be inserted into the scenery terrain along roads and made to look like safety posts. If you could drill them and slide black or brown thread through them, or fishing line, you would have the safety cables.
They can be used as pylons for trestles or bridges or decks or piers. Fence posts, loading dock supports…there must be a few other possible uses.
Crandell
I immediately thought electric / telephone poles and the old style “guard” rails like has been mentioned above.
Not sure about your area, but trees from where I grew up were seldom perfectly straight, even when they were sawn to 8’, 10’, 12’, 14’ and 16’ lengths at the sawmill I worked at they weren’t straight. 
You could cut some of them into shorter lengths and build a scale log home!
I built an HO scale log house for a rural scene on one of my HO modules with 1/8" dowels.
I think Johnboy’s list and other ideas are great. I bought a bunch of dowels in different sizes and lengths at a dollar store with the idea of them being:
1}logs-take a serated cutter to the sides and scrape “bark” onto them,then paint to look like tree bark on the sides
2} Bents for a trestle
3} pilings
- old style guardrails along dirt roads
5} telegraph/telephone poles
6} tree trunks
7} Old wooden-style log Tunnel portals
8} 101 102 other uses that I can’t think of right now that I have yet to use them for, but thought I could at the time I bought them. So I still have a whole mess of them. Funny, I never thought of using them as stir sticks!