Dowel cutting - a photo example

THere have been lots of threads and discussions on how to cut dowels; the debate being should each dowel be measured and cut separately .... meaning should you insert 4 dowels into the cake and mark the height on each and then cut each one to their mark? Or should one dowel be used to measure and all other dowels be cut the same size as that one .... meaning one dowel is inserted into the cake, measured and marked, then all 4 dowels are cut to that same length.

On the cake I made this past weekend, I had a real low point in the cake. I do the "insert one and use it to measure all" system and when I put the 4 cut dowels into the cake, one of them stood about 1/4" taller than the others. Now 1/4" is a lot of height when wanting to make sure a cake is level, so I took a plastic plate and set it on top of the dowels and check the level.....it was perfect! So I thought this would be a good example to photograph and share.

The 2nd pic (sorry....I added them in the wrong order!) is the photo showing the dowels sticking up out of the cake at different heights. The dowels are the same size ... .it's the cake that has low points.

The 1st photo is the finished cake ... all tiers perfectly level.

Had I measured, marked and cut each dowel separately, my cake would have leaned and not been level.

Before leahs reminds me of the SPS system, allow me to say for the record that when I convert to SPS, I won't have to worry about doing this!

Oops! Edited to add the photos!

I had to edit to add the pics (hit the Submit button instead of the Add Attachment button!). then I had to reduce the size of the pics before I could add them. Good thing I'm a little more organized when I actually MAKE the cakes!

Here's a thread where leahs explains SPS: http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-383553-dowel.html

Actually, I did measure from the high point ... the one I measured by is the front left one. The cake was higher there and I cut the dowel even with the cake. The other dowels are in lower points of the cake, which is why they stick up.

If I had measured each one individually, the one in the back right would have been 1/4" shorter than it should have been. When I sat the cake on top of these 4, then the back right corner would have leaned by 1/4". A small discrepancy of only 1/4" on a lower tier results in the higher tiers looking like they are leaning even more.

Unless you know that your CAKE is perfectly level, I don't see how measuring/cutting each one can work. In this example, the front right dowel is (for example) 4.25" tall. Had I done each one individually, the back right one would have been only 4.00" tall. No way a cake can be level with those kind of measurements.

Yes, it would. I've done that and when I saw how far down the dowels were in the cake, I've re-cut them, using the high point as the point of reference.

Since I had a border on this one (and it can be done with ribbon-border-bases, too), it was easy to fill the small gap with the border. Much better to fill in a border than to try to fix a leaning cake.

Carson....ideally, of course, would be to try to get them as close to the level of the icing as possible. On some, I've had them "slightly" below the surface with one "slightly" above the surface. The slightly-below one allowed the cake to settle "into" the cake by a 1/8" or 1/4" or so, but nothing that damaged the cake or the look.

This one was SUCH a difference in height that it caught my attention and when I check the level and found it was perfect, I thought it was be a good pictorial example of this topic, since it is brought up and asked so frequently.