Predrilling hardwood.

[Glen Taylor]

Hi everyone.

This is my first attempt at a topic about anything on line. I have a K3 and have just used it to make up some beech kitchen worktops. They were made from four lengths of steamed beech. [PAR] 2800mm x 152mm x 30mm, joined to make up to 2400mm x 608mm x 30mm max. They are still to sand down but its gone ok so far. I was in some doubt about whether to attempt to pilot drill before driving the screws and whether to use coarse or fine. I also pondered whether to glue or not.I chose to do all this due to cost of ready made solid wood tops. However I had to buy four Bessey clamps and a long Kreg clamp as well, to bring everything into line. Also a large enough trimmer cutter for my router. This has brought the cost to about the same but at least I now have some more kit [I am a toolaholic!].  I decided to use my Kreg micro jig [another indulgence], with 1" fine screws and to glue with polyurethane glue. I thought the glue would expand to fill any gaps that clamping and screwing couldn't fix, bearing in mind that I didn't want food particles to get in anywhere and that it was water resistant. I chose micro jig to keep size of holes down and 1" screws because I was glueing and clamping anyway. As it was, the clamps pulled the boards together lengthways so that there were no gaps but I had difficulty getting them even crossways due to some warping despite clamping with stiff battens. There were some places where there were raised parts of say 1mm to 1.5mm at the board joints. Hence the need for some further planing/sanding. I think I could have used 1" coarse screws as a few screws threaded the beech even with careful driving. The beech was softer in parts than I thought it would be.

I am puzzled about some of the advice about piloting before screw-driving in some hardwoods and man made boards to avoid splitting. Firstly, how would you get the correct angle to pilot without going through the pocket hole? and even then you would need an exceptionally long small diameter bit to achieve this and would also need to clamp together the pieces to be joined while piloting to get the pilot hole in the right place. It seems a bit too involved to me.