Red oak stand

A local church asked me to build an oak stand. They have several of these type stands, but wanted me to build one more.

The most interesting part of this project, was the best method of attaching the top horizontal piece to the main square column. The old-fashioned way would be to use 3/8" diameter glued dowels.

I wondered if one could use Kreg pocket screws, angling up through the outside of the column to screw into the top. The issue is that the drilled pocket holes would be visible in the square column.

I decided to spend the $70 and try the Kreg plug cutter attachment….......and try out this method. After you drill the plugs from the same material you are using on the project, you must free the plugs by table sawing the bottom end off, 3/16" from the end, with a 15 degree angle…......using blue masking tape to keep the freed plugs from flying away.

The plugs are designed to be sanded flush after gluing them in. Unfortuantely, when you have a 90 degree joint like I have on this project, you can not belt sand them off with the grain, because the sander hits the horizontal top. I sanded the my test piece at 90 degrees to the grain….....but this made bad cross-grain sanding marks which would take a long time to hand sand out.

So, at the end of the day, I did not use the Kreg pocket screws and plugs to attach the top…..........I used the conventional 3/8" dia dowels…........which should last many years.

I may try the Kreg plug cutter on another project, where I do not have 90 degree joints.

To see detailed documentation of this project, plus the Kreg plug cutter experiment, see my woodworking web site.

Thanks!