Well i got the little buggers out, and only wrecked one. I fortunatley have a girlfriend with a father with a tool for damn near everything in his overly cluttered garage

So after hauling the clylinder over to his house he had some tool that threaded into the center(similar to a tap, but it was something else, can't remember what he called it) that threaded the inside of the dowel enough to grab it and twisted 3 out of the 4 loose. the 4th refused to twist so after threadying his tool in we wound up clamping a vice grip onto the end and hitting the vice grip with a hammer. Took about a dozen times of reattaching the vice gribs put that little bugger finally came out. This last one that was such a pain mainly because I had cracked the side of the dowel with my needle nose pliers back at home when I first tried pulling it out.
After examining the dowels they all appeared very rusted which I am assuming is what had them cemented into the cylinder.
Thanks for all the input on this. I originally headed over to the almost-in-laws(been with my girlfriend for a few years now) since I knew he had a die & tap set to try out, which was suggested by the knowledgeable folks on this site

As always, the help is appreciated, and I will likely need a lot more of it once I actually start putting everything back together
