Using Kreg Pocket Hole Screws

My Love-Hate Relationship with Pocket Hole Joinery

Confession time: I used to be a pocket hole snob. Thought it was cheating and that real woodworking meant dovetails and mortise-and-tenon. Then I had to build 14 face frames in a weekend for a kitchen renovation.

I bought a Kreg jig that Friday. By Sunday evening, I was done with all 14 frames. Have not looked back since. Sometimes the cheater method is just… the smart method?

What Makes These Screws Different

Regular wood screws in a pocket hole are a disaster. Trust me, I tried that once to save money. The screws either split the wood, stripped out, or pulled through. Kreg pocket screws are designed weird for a reason.

That flat washer head? It sits in the pocket without pulling through. The self-tapping tip? Means you do not need pilot holes. The thread design actually grips better the more you tighten it, instead of stripping out like regular screws in the same situation.

Are they more expensive than regular screws? Yep. Worth it? Absolutely. I wasted more in ruined test pieces trying to cheap out than I would have spent just buying the right screws.

Coarse vs Fine Thread – When It Actually Matters

The short version: coarse threads for soft stuff (pine, plywood, MDF), fine threads for hard stuff (oak, maple, cherry). But it is not that simple.

I have used coarse threads in oak before – they work fine, they just take more muscle to drive. Fine threads in pine are where you get problems. The threads are so tight they do not grip the soft fibers well, and the screw can actually work loose over time. I had a pine bookshelf do exactly that about six months after building it. Had to pull it apart and redo with coarse screws.

For plywood specifically, I always go coarse regardless of whether it is hardwood veneer. The core of most plywood is softwood or poplar, so that is what the threads are gripping.

Lengths – My Cheat Sheet

Kreg has charts for this but honestly I have memorized the common ones:

Half inch material: use 1 inch screws
Three quarter inch material: use 1 and 1/4 inch screws
One and a half inch material: use 2 and 1/2 inch screws

That covers probably 90 percent of what I build. For weird thicknesses, the screw should go about 1 inch into the receiving board. Any less and you are not getting good hold. Any more and you are risking blowing through the face.

The Finish Dilemma

Indoor projects? Regular zinc-coated screws work great. They will never rust sitting in your living room.

Outdoor projects are where I messed up once. Built a workbench for my screen porch using regular screws. Within a year, orange rust stains were bleeding through the paint. Looked awful, and the screws had lost a lot of their holding power.

For anything outdoors or even in a damp basement, spend the extra money on Blue-Kote or stainless. The stainless are almost obnoxiously expensive but they will outlast the wood they are holding together.

Where I Use (And Do Not Use) Pocket Holes

Perfect for:

• Face frames (this is really what they are designed for)
• Cabinet boxes
• Attaching tabletops to aprons
• Quick shop furniture
• Joining panels edge-to-edge when strength matters more than looks

Where I skip them:

• Visible joinery on nice furniture (I will hide pocket holes on the underside but not on the top of a table)
• End-grain to end-grain connections – they just do not hold well
• Super thin material – anything under half an inch tends to split
• Joints that need to flex (pocket holes are rigid, so rocking chairs or anything with movement need different joinery)

The Jig Matters More Than You Would Think

I started with the cheap 40 dollar Kreg jig. It worked, but clamping was fiddly and I constantly had to readjust the stop collar. The K5 Master system (or whatever they call it now) was a game changer. Auto-adjusting clamp, solid base, consistent holes every time.

Is the expensive jig necessary? No. But if you are drilling more than a dozen pocket holes per project, it pays for itself in time savings and reduced frustration. My cheap jig lives in my toolbox for job site work. The good one stays at the bench.

Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Day

Drilling too close to the edge: I did this on a narrow apron board once. The drill bit blew out the back side and ruined a piece of walnut I had been saving. Now I always test on scrap first when working near edges.

Over-driving the screw: Impact drivers are too aggressive for pocket screws. The screw keeps going and either strips the hole or pulls right through. I use a drill with a clutch setting or just go slow with an impact and ease off at the end.

Not clamping the joint: You can hand-hold small pieces, but for anything structural, clamp the boards together before driving screws. Otherwise they shift and you end up with a misaligned joint you can not fix without starting over.

Forgetting the order: On face frames, always assemble the rails (horizontal pieces) to the stiles (vertical pieces), not the other way around. Getting this backwards means your pocket holes show from the wrong direction.

My Current Screw Stash

I keep 1 and 1/4 inch coarse and fine threads in bulk (boxes of 500+). That handles most work. For specialty stuff I buy smaller boxes as needed – the 2 and 1/2 inch screws are expensive and I rarely need them.

Also worth having: the little plastic plugs if you want to hide holes on visible surfaces. I have never used the face-grain wood plugs because they are obvious anyway – if I need to hide a pocket hole that badly, I am probably using a different joint.

Bottom line: pocket holes are not fine furniture joinery. They are fast, strong, forgiving joinery that lets you build stuff quickly without losing sleep over it falling apart. I still cut dovetails when they matter. But for shop furniture, cabinets, and quick projects? Pocket screws all day.