Pocket holes

We were on our way to the Beaverton Farmer’s Market this morning and stumbled on some sort of power tool infomercial filming thing in front of the library. It turns out it was for Kreg Tool Company‘s pocket screw joinery tools/jigs.
I’ve been really curious about them as they seem like they’d make my life easier when it comes to doing a number of shelving/cabinetry and woodworking tasks I’ve got planned for around the house. Plus Darren really extolled the virtues of pocket holes for making the facing on the bathroom cabinets he made recently.

After picking up a copy of their catalog, I was going to move on to the market, but they asked if I’d like to demo the tool and a friendly guy (pictured) told me all about their history and design and the family business (turns out Todd is the founder’s son). How could I refuse?
I was quite impressed. They had me make a little wall shelf by drilling about 8 holes to join five pieces of pre-cut wood. I had a clamp for holding one piece to the table and that was it, so the work was a bit sloppy in as much as it wasn’t set up for very clean results. But the results were quite good. I whipped the shelf together in a couple minutes and things were mostly flush with basically zero effort. The jig for drilling and the collars for the drills are super fast and easy to set up and use reliably. They pointed out also that if you’re gluing you can just keep on working since the screws are holding things, instead of long cycles of gluing, clamping, waiting.
I’d been interested in using pocket screw joinery, but the price of tools versus not knowing for sure how well it worked in practice made me a bit hesitant. But I’ve got my birthday coupon this month from Woodcraft and a nice demo of their product and will definitely be picking up some of this gear.