Pocket hole joinery......

[Don Roberto]

Are you a skilled carpenter and joiner ? Are your mortice and tenons strong and perfect ?
Is your dovetail joinery immaculate ? Do you even know what I am blethering on about ?

If any of your answers to the above is NO. Then fear not. I may just have the answer to your DIY dilemmas. The short answer is Pocket Hole Joinery.

Wassat ? I hear you say. Well, put simply, a pocket hole is a means of joining timber together with screws that are partially or completely hidden. Any wood project can be undertaken, chairs, tables, book cases, and cabinetry of all styles. Add a little carpenters glue and all joints are immensely strong.

Now in all things there are drawbacks. With pocket hole joinery the drawback is price, the jigs are not cheap. As are the special screws and the pocket hole plugs (wood plugs that render the pocket holes almost invisible). Also to make the joints square and level, clamping is usually needed, I bought 2 expensive purpose made clamps, only to find a £ 5.00 bar clamp worked just as well.

My pocket hole gear is made by Kreg, an American company, (the only one available at the time) but now there are several makes on the market, and all are of excellent quality.

So if you are not a time served carpenter, but want to build wooden projects that are a lot more solid than the cheap far eastern rubbish that seems to be flooding the household
market these days. Then have a look on the Internet and YouTube for pocket hole joinery.
You may just find that your imagination will be the only limit to what you can build from wood. Cheers me dears..........

[mariat]

I bought one of the £30 Kreg jigs to help build my chicken coop, but it was useless for the task as the maximum thickness of timber it could be used on was less that what I was using. I will use it in the future though, when I make use of some Victorian pitch pine paneling i have. There are some really nice furniture plans on the net, which use pocket hole joinery.

[Don Roberto]

I bought one of the £30 Kreg jigs to help build my chicken coop, but it was useless for the task as the maximum thickness of timber it could be used on was less that what I was using. I will use it in the future though, when I make use of some Victorian pitch pine paneling i have. There are some really nice furniture plans on the net, which use pocket hole joinery.

I have used pocket hole joinery on timber thicker than the maximum 1 1/2" recommended.
I joined 3" stock, by simply drilling pocket holes on opposite sides, therefore fastening the joint securely. The downside was the extra expense on doubling up on screws. Cheerio me deario..........

[mariat]

My coop is done now, but I'll remember that for next time