Great product ideas emerged when two disciplines, woodworking and metalworking, collided. In 1986, Craig Sommerfeld was in the process of building his home and needed to find a way to attach his doweled face frames to his kitchen cabinet carcass members. Although he was a tool and die-maker by trade, and woodworker out of necessity, Craig had a problem. Not wanting to nail the face frames on and then fill them with putty, he designed and built “Craig’s Jig”, which was a single-hole pocket hole jig crafted from steel and aluminum. Craig’s Jig allowed him to attach the face frames from the cabinet’s interior, where the joint could be hidden from view.

Encouraged by friends and coworkers, Craig built a few more jigs and set out to show them to the public at local woodworking shows. At these shows Craig met an audience who had no knowledge of the joinery method he was promoting, yet they were very interested in learning about a new way to build projects with wood. Week after week, month after month, year after year, Craig continued to build his products and promote them at weekend woodworking shows.

Hundreds of trade shows and thousands of demonstrations later, Kreg Tool Company has emerged as the leader in pocket-hole technology.