Pocket Hole Joinery – Woodworking or Cheating

Pocket Hole Joinery – Woodworking or Cheating

As we work towards our next goal so the world around us and this includes the woodworking world, changes, develops and gets a little more advanced. Wood on the other hand has remained wood for centuries. Solid, exotic, engineered, fancy – whatever your flavour, Kreg is designing products that complement the way we work and allowing us the freedom to move faster through our projects without losing one key element, perfection.

Pocket Hole Joinery – Woodworking or Cheating? Woodwork has always embraced certain elements, namely: design, good looks and function. Joinery over the years has developed to compliment all three of the elements, but specifically function – will the join do the job successfully? Then is it time effective and does it look good? Yes, yes and yes, the joint is reproduced through the project and the project is finished.  Seems easy enough, but what if someone said do it quicker with the same strength? What if that same someone said, “Project looks can also be made great and this will enhance the products quality”? The Kreg guys said these things and those of us that have put them to the test will agree, but there is more to the pocket hole than just a stand-alone jointing system – there is the Kreg Screw.

Ridiculous, I agree, but let me explain. The Kreg Screw and the pocket hole that accommodates it have an important primary task namely Clamping. We constantly need to clamp down on the work pieces to ensure that there is no lateral movement when the screws are inserted. The pressure created in the join is substantial and this makes a strong, better than most, joint.

Adding ‘pocket clamps’ to any other form of joinery, even just as ‘clamps’ makes perfect sense and I myself, am prone to cutting grooves/slots to house the material to be joined. The use of pocket holes as a joint method, or the use of the system to support an existing joint method leads me to think that the Kreg Pocket Hole Joint System is as real to woodworking as Mortise and Tenon joints or biscuits and dowels.

Cheating? I don’t think so, and look forward to see where the pocket hole or even just the pocket clamps can assist me in the future!