Hide Them Screws

  

I’m a major fan of pocket hole joinery – I use it in both personal projects and in projects destined to be woodworking plans. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s relatively free of frustration, and it encourages beginners to build. 

Another great benefit – you can “hide” screws. Take a look at the bench below. 

 

Now, there are four visible screws, on in each corner, but all of the other screws used to build this bench are completely hidden. If you’ve used pocket hole joinery before, you’ll get that the long and short rails have pocket holes drilled on the ends of the back faces, and that’s how they are joined to the legs. 

What you may not get is that there are pocket holes drilled on the sides of the back faces of the rails (and on a center stretcher not visible in the photo). This allows the pocket hole screws to drive into the seat slats, securing them to the bench assembly. 

This isn’t a new technique at all – many table projects in particular use this method, either via countersunk holes in the frame or with modified corner braces of one type or another. But I find pocket holes to be much easier, and a much faster. Just make sure you properly measure and place the pocket holes so you don’t run into any surprises during assembly. 

“Hiding” the screws gives you a much cleaner appearance and no holes to fill on the outer part of a project. 

Here are the plans for building a similar bench chiefsshop.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/chiefsshopsimplebench.pdf

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