Benefits of Making Pocket Hole Joints

Making pocket hole joints is a method of wood joinery. An advantage of using pocket holes to join wood is that you only need one clamp to complete a project. Another benefit is that you can continue to build your project once you drive in the screws. You don't have to wait for the glue to dry. This can considerably shorten the completion time of your project. As wood shrinks and expands with temperature, gluing and screwing the joints together prevents gaps from forming between work pieces.

You can also repair a pocket hole joint without having to dismantle the joint. For example, if you wish to strengthen a piece of furniture, you only need to drill additional pocket holes and use screws to tack the pieces together.

While the more experienced woodworker would go for the large bench-mounted jigs, basic pocket hole jigs which are inexpensive are also available for newbies. They can be used conveniently in any woodwork shop to produce professional looking joints.

How to create a joint with the pocket hole jig

It may be a good idea to mark the face of the board you wish to drill so you can ensure the hole is in the correct place. Clamp the pocket hole jig securely to your wood and commence drilling. After drilling the hole, a specially designed fastener is used to assemble the joints. The screws are designed with self-drilling tips which will not split the wood when you drive them in. The screw grabs better if you screw into the face or edge of the board rather than the end grain. If you are joining boards which are perpendicular to each other, ensure that the cuts are precise so that there are no gaps.

A word about the pocket hole screw

Self-tapping pocket screws are used to make pocket hole joints because they produce strong, tight joints. They are designed with self-drilling tips which will not split the wood when you drive them in.

The screws can grip any type of wood, but in general, screws with coarse  threads are used for soft wood while those fine threads are better for harder wood. Pocket screws have a wide washer head to prevent the screw going too far into the joint and cracking the wood. Always ensure that you use pocket hole joint screws of appropriate length base on the thickness of the pieces of wood you are joining.

Final thoughts

 Pocket hole joinery is inexpensive and easier to use than some of the more expensive methods of joining wood.  As mentioned earlier, the availability of affordable jigs makes the use of this form of joinery a possibility for almost every woodworker, even the newbies. Pocket hole jigs are manufactured with markings which make it easy to set the jig and the depth stop to match the thickness of the wood. They come with instructions describing how to use them. One downside however, is that they are not suitable for joining thin pieces of wood.