Hiding Pocket Holes with Pocket Hole Plugs

If you're okay with how pocket holes look, and they are all on the inside faces of the pieces, then I'm okay with it. However, I wanna show you how you can plug the pocket holes very easily. Let's go through screw pockets in general. First, I've got my pocket hole jig here, and we're gonna drill a couple of pocket holes into this piece. And then, let's do some assembly.

Now, when you assemble, we do wanna make sure that the parts are gonna stay lined up. There's a tendency for them to creep because of the angle that we drilled the hole at. So a really easy way to get 'em to line up is to use a clamp like this, once it's set to the right thickness. We are also gonna add some glue to the joint, and that does go a long way toward making these joints nice and strong. And because we're working with hardwood, not softwood, the screws that we'll be using are fine-threaded screws.

So, the rule of the road there with pocket holes is, if you're working in softwoods or man-made materials, these should be coarse threads. If we're working in hardwoods, we should have fine threads like we do on this one. All right, now, like I was saying earlier, if you're okay with that, I'm okay with that. However, we can make it look better by masking those holes, simply using dowels that match our material. When we do pocket holes, these are 3/8 inch holes.

So if you go out and you get 3/8 inch dowels, cut 'em a little bit long, insert in the hole. And then what I'm gonna do is I put this in as I'm holding it down because of the angle of that pocket and I wanna make sure it stays seated. And then tap it the rest of the way using a mallet. So that's the part right there. It's a little bit tricky to get it started.

And we wanna make sure we don't mess up that pocket hole which will affect the fit between the pocket and the dowel. I'm gonna let that glue dry and then come back and show you how to finish these off. Glue's dry. So let's move on to phase two. First thing, let's cut off the excess.

And for that, I really like these pull saws. Very fine teeth, cuts on the pull stroke. You can get these at woodworking specialty stores. And what I'm really doing is letting the saw itself ride just above the surface of the material, so that acts as my guide. Second verse, same as the first.

The other thing that's cool with these saws is that, see how flexible that blade is? So when I'm doing this kinda work, it allows me to cut that, but pull the handle up off of the bench, where if this was, say a dovetail saw with a spine in it, everything would have to be down here. But what I'm doing, frankly, without even thinking about it is, I'm bowing the blade, getting the handle up here where it's easier for me to hold and work with, while at the same time being able to make the cut. It's always great when you can make the cut. Now we're close, but we're not done.

Now we've got oak plugs in our oak frame to help mask those holes. This, I think, looks a whole lot better than simply having the pocket holes in there. Here, we've got pretty good color match and grain match. Maybe, instead of trying to mask it, you just wanna make it into a feature of the project. So in this case, using the same jig, drilled my pocket holes, and I've got maple, plugged the holes with walnut, so it creates a contrast.

If you're gonna do this, and you're really gonna draw attention to this, you do wanna make sure you have some symmetry to the layout. So in this case, I'd wanna make sure that the distance from edge to pocket hole and edge to pocket hole is identical, because if it's not or if they're off center or there's something weird looking about it, because of the color contrast, your eye's gonna go right to that and you're gonna see that they're a little bit weird. So, plugging the pocket holes is a great way to make sure that when we're done, those pocket holes are as invisible as they can be.