Pocket Hole Joinery: Beyond Face Frames
George VondriskaLeg to rail construction is a very common part of building furniture. There are lots of ways the joints can be created, but few are as quick and easy as pocket holes. And, there’s plenty of strength in a pocket hole joint. It’s common for a leg to rail joint to have a reveal, an offset, between the face of the rail and the face of the leg. In this video we’ll show you a dirt simple way to build an offset into your furniture projects.
Edge-to-Edge Glue-Ups
If you’re making furniture, you’re probably also making things like table tops. For these, you need edge to edge glue ups. Not enough clamps to do the glue ups you need to create? No problem. Pocket holes to the rescue again. Put pocket holes along the edges that you’re putting together, and you can use pocket hole screws to draw your edge to edge joints closed.
Blind Case Sides
When you’re building cabinets and have a blind end, one that goes against a wall or another cabinet, pocket holes will help you save on clamp use again. You can cut pocket holes in the case side at the front edge, and use pocket hole screws to pull the face frame against the front of the case. This approach frees up clamps, and also means you can keep working with the case without having clamps in the way.
There are lots of ways to join wood in addition to pocket hole joinery, so check out more videos on joints and joinery. And, if you want to mask your pocket hole joinery, there are also techniques for hiding screw pockets.
More Info
For further details on the Castle 100 Pocket Hole Machine visit www.castleusa.com.
Lots and lots of people when they think about screw pockets, pocket holes, they think of applications like this where I'm creating a face frame. However, you can also use pocket holes in furniture construction and that's a little bit more of what I wanna talk about here. I've got these parts ready to go. Some nice walnut legs. Don't I have nice legs?
And some oak rails. And I'm gonna put together a stool where like I've said it here, we're gonna use a reveal between the face of the rail and the face of the leg. Reveal is a little step right there. Pocket holes to bring those parts together. And this is neat.
If you don't own enough bar clamps to go around and we never quite own enough clamps, we can also use pocket holes to put the pieces together. They're gonna then make the stool top. So, pocket holes, where are we going with this? Well, in order to make pocket holes we need a pocket hole machine. And oddly enough, there's one right here on my bench.
The pocket holes are gonna go on the inside faces of our rails. I'm gonna do two pocket holes in each end of each rail. We don't need to do any pocket holes in the legs. Alright. I'm gonna rework my setup here at the bench and then we can start creating our stool base, our top, including that reveal that we wanna get between the rails and the legs.
I've got one of the long rail two leg assemblies put together. There's that reveal, the step I was talking about. Let me show you how we get that. It's stupid simple. Quarter inch plywood.
Then the rail. Then we drive our pockets or pockets crews. So I do like putting a little glue into my pocket joints, line up the top of the rail with the end of the leg. And then all we need here really is just a little bit of lateral pressure to hold everything closed. That looks good.
And then it's gonna be kind of a rinse and repeat thing with our short rails and those legs. Those legs being the legs we've already got incorporated here. So same thing. Use your spacers so that we have a uniform reveal on every side of the stool. So that assembly will go the same way.
Now, what about our top? I have numbered the parts. I always do this when I'm doing an edge to edge glue up and that tells me how I want them to go together. So there's my numbering system. We're gonna work on the parts this way and thusly and this way.
There we go. So what I'm adjusting here is I need just a little bit of lateral pressure just to hold everything in place this way. But I don't want so much pressure that I'm introducing a bow. So that's why I was adjusting the tension there. That's just right now.
And what's cool about this is that the screws are the clamps. So as soon as the screws are in, we can take this off of the bench top and set it aside, let the glue dry and it'll be, once the glue is dry, ready for the next step, sanding and everything else. So you don't have to tie up clamps in your shop to make this happen. And like I said earlier, if you just don't plan to have enough clamps on hand to do these edge to edge glue ups, the pocket holes provide a good alternative. All right, I'm gonna let that glue dry, sand that nice and level.
I also need to put together my short rails in my legs. Then we can have a look at what this finished stool looks like. But I also wanna go a little bit down the road of cabinet making and show you something there. Let me wrap up my stool assembly and then we'll move on to a little bit of casework. I've got the stool put together.
The reveal is such a nice touch. I really like how that looks between the oak rails and the walnut legs. Now, the other place I use pocket holes was on the back face of the rail. There's a pocket hole here that joins the rail to the bottom of the top and that's what's holding everything together. So that stool is set.
Now here's the other thing that's worth looking at here. Cabinet work. We looked at a face frame. That's how we got started, but the other place I use pocket holes a lot is in the case itself. And very commonly when the side isn't gonna show I'm using pocket holes in the case, again to take the place of clamps and join the face frame on.
So when we wanna do that work, got the melamine secured to the bench. And this is a case where it's probably easier to bring the tool to the work than the work to the tool. Here's what I mean by that. And like I said what that'll let me do is fasten my face frame to that case side without having to use clamps, very convenient. So outside of our kind of ubiquitous face frame application for pocket holes, lots of other stuff you can do with them that are very useful in your furniture and cabinet work.
I don't have a lot of clamps as I do not do large work often but when I do I use pocket holes AND biscuits joints at the same time. This helps to line up and strengthen joints without clamps.
When using pocket holes in cabinet plywood side panels, do you have recommendations as to how to prevent screws from over-penetrating through the soft inner layer of the plywood? Unlike solid hardwood face frames, I find the screws penetrate deeper than hardwood, and therefore the tips project out past the inside of the panel.
Why was George using a hand drill on each pocket hole after it was drilled, please.
What is that pocket hole machine?
<strong>ticket 19320 In this video, George is using a Castle 100 pocket hole machine. I am considering the purchase of a more automated pocket hole jig. How would you compare this machine to the Kreg Foreman machine? If you are using the Castle 100 machine can you use Kreg pocket hole screws?
This video has something that I have seen several times. George is demonstrating something on the work bench and a banner appears right on top of what we are looking. I know that the banner identifying George is important, but not right on top of the demonstration. Thanks for all the work that goes into the videos, managing this very fine site, and for reading my complaint. Paul
I don't have a pocket hole machine, but I use pocket holes lots. I use a pocket hole jig set purchased at lowes for about $30.00. It works great.
You screwed the top of the stool to the rails on all four sides? Does that eliminate the ability for the wood to sufficiently expand and contract?
Thank you for the video. I do have a question: You said at the end you used pocket screws to attach the stool top. So you don't need table top fasteners instead? (Just a note, you saved my life with perfect timing as I was building a 7 foot wide, all Walnut dog kennel for my in-laws when I received an email with your Table Top Fastener video. The top was made of $270 worth of Curly Walnut which was beautiful. My plan was to use pocket screws. Thank you for the table top fastener video. My friend made a beautiful farm table for his wife and pocket screwed the top on. It cracked in many places when the weather changed. I can't thank you enough!!)
You used two kinds of glue, different woods?