The Morning Woodworker

Pocket Hole Joinery by Kreg

In January I bought the Pocket Hole Master Kit by Kreg. I never used it until I started on the wooden platform in my bedroom, where the new”shop” is going to be.

I was trying to decide on how to attach all of the pieces to the grid work that would support the platform.

Should it be angle braces? Way too expensive.

Deck screws? Probably split the wood.

Nails? Hell no!

Then I remembered that for some reason I grabbed the Kreg Pocket Hole Master Kit from home on my way to South Carolina. Why not?

So I went to Lowes to grab some pocket hole screws. The longest ones they had were 2 1/2 in. blue ones, about $5. The instructions don’t cover how to join anything thicker than 1 1/2 in. so I had to play around with the settings. After a couple of practice pieces, I found the perfect setting for what I was going to do, then went to town on joining the pieces of the grid work  together.

I am not going to go into detail on the specifics of using this system. You basically clamp the hole drilling jig to the piece that you want to join and use the included “special” drill bit to drill the pilot hole into the workpiece. There three different hole spacing setups to chose from. I just chose the one that best fit the piece.

After that you put the two pieces of wood that you want to join together and use a modified “vise grip” clamp (included in master kit) to hold the two pieces together in perfect alignment. There is no need to drill a hole into the mating piece.

After that you simply drive the screw into the two pieces. The screw will draw the two pieces together like a clamp so if you want to further strengthen the joint you can apply glue before screwing together. I chose not to glue because I will eventually be tearing this setup down and probably be throwing it all away. After screwing together, remove the vise grip and you are done. It could not be simpler.

You could get away with just buying the Mini Kreg Jig® Kit and do everything I did with the Kreg Jig® K3 Master System but I think that if you plan on doing any amount of work with this system, go ahead and get the Master System. The Benchtop and Portable Bases along with the Dust Collection attachment are well worth the investment. I used the benchtop base without attaching to any sort of panel for support and it worked flawlessly. It held up a 6 ft. 2×2 firring strip vertically without tipping over, and that was on top of a carpet floor. The benchtop base also sped up the time in making the joints tremendously. I had to make 32 joints in all and it only took about 30 minutes, and that included screwing them all together. The dust collection attachment worked great as well. the only thing that came out was a few chips of wood that fell out of the flutes of the drill bit.

So while I don’t think that I would use the Pocket Hole System for any “fine” woodworking, I do know that it will find a place for any utility  furniture that I need in a hurry.  And, if you place your joints (hole) in an inconspicuous location, nobody would ever know that you used it. I will be definitely be using this while I set up my shop for making  utility  shelves and tables.

If anyone has anything else to add about this system I would love to hear about it, especially if you have made any furniture with it . So just leave a comment and say what you have to say about it.

Eric