Woodworking Tip: Kreg Jig

If you've been around woodworking for very long, you are familiar with the Kreg Jig system. It allows you to quickly and easily join wood together without gluing or nailing by creating a perfect pocket hole. It creates a strong joint with Kreg's self-tapping wood screws.

I use the Kreg Jig for various joints, primarily when I want to join two pieces together where the pocket holes are hidden. For visible joints, I tend to nail them together with a finish nail gun. I just don't want to use the plugs and the nail gun is much faster. However, the pocket-hole joinery is much stronger and it can be used on edge-to-edge butt joints (e.g., face frame), whereas you cannot use a nail gun for edge-to-edge joints.

So, if you are looking into buying a Kreg Jig, I recommended the Kreg R3 Jr. Pocket Hole Jig System. I have the Kreg K4MS Jig Master System and use the R-3 parts almost exclusively. And the R-3 is only about $40 compared to $100 or $140 for the bigger systems.  

Woodworking Tip: How to Countersink Finish Nails with your Finish Nail Gun

Now this is possibly the greatest woodworking tip I have ever discovered. If you work much with finish nail guns, you will completely relate to the frustration of having a nail not drive deep enough. This can be caused by several things: Not holding the nail gun perfectly flush, have the air pressure turned down on the compressor, bumping the trigger twice and accidentally shooting two nails instead of one, etc.

With non-nail gun finish nails, it is simple—just get a nail set or another nail and tap it in with your hammer. This also works with other types of larger nails. However, the head of a finish nail from a nail gun is basically nonexistent. So you are left either to pull it out with pliers, break the head off or try to drive the head flush with a nail set.

I discover this method by accident. I noticed that when the nail gun runs out of nails, it still leaves a nail hole in the wood. This is because it shoots air out with enough force to drive a nail into the wood. So if you need to drive a finish nail deeper into the wood, take all the nails out of the nail gun, line the tip up (where the nail shoots out) with the nail head and shoot air at the nail until it countersink. Then fill it with wood filler as you do you other nails. This has saved me a lot of headache and prevented damage to the wood caused by the other methods mentioned above.