Thread: Advice on pipe clamps

Activity!

I now have 10 pipe clamps fitted with Bessey H-style BPC34's. I have to say, I'm transfixed and ordering 10 more. The BPC34's arent cheap. They feel like good quality items in the hand.

To the comments!

-- Im sure everyone has their favourites. Im not trying to twist any arms, just solve a problem I have... SMALL space (and I mean small for my level of production) and clamps numbers per $ (think of a tiny fortnightly income, then divide that by SIX and you'd be close) and the need to do lots of simultaneous jobs.

-- I have Bessey KBody's, sash clamps and boxes of bar style clamps in various styles. I give the Kbody clamps 9 out of 10, losing only a point - in that if glue gets on the bar/ridges the head won't slide so easily... so one has to be careful on cleanup... I dislike G-Clamps with an intensity.... too heavy, cludgy and look terrible and I absolutely despise the el-cheapo cast iron junk (I wont call it Chinese junk, as thats simply where they are made. They are made to a price, and if it weren't China it would simply be elsewhere)

-- I chose the Gal pipe as demo'd by BobL.... blast it over with the Scotch Bright on a drill and its shiney. The Bogans will like that. It took only a minute a pipe to make it gleam. I like shiney... plus clean and organised workplaces.

-- I didn't go with powder coating or the painted options for the very reasons as advised by Rrich. My preliminary findings, which are obvious, is the softer galvanised surface offers unbelievable bite to the chucks (or clutch plates, or whatervertheycall-em's). The tension one can apply is silly. The clutches have kung-fu grip.

Now, I haven't tested these for a full year under daily and continuous production runs, BUT I have used them to make 6 chairs and a table in the last 48 hours. I use 600mm KBody mostly to keep everything straight/parallel without too much effort (love love love them), but I also used to use a zillion Irwin Quick Grips... the little ones you buy in 4 packs. The new pipe clamps are 600mm.... WOW, what a difference it has made. It offered me a much greater option to do more chairs at once, reduced my crowding and I had really good control for tensioning and getting everything 90-degrees/straight/parallel.

Before it was a bit of a struggle, so Chair glue up was in three stages. For the last job I did the whole frame glue up in a single stage. I'm so impressed I'm going back to rethink my process (and story sticks) and seeing if I can't prefabricate all my Festool Domino holes so the whole thing can be done as one stage. Bargain!

Another feature, which is obvious and maybe undersold, is I can make pipes that are the lengths I want them. Little stubby ones for most of my work, plus a few really long ones... perhaps??? (when I make doors!!)... left over bar on 1200 pipes just get in the way.

I'm converted and I'm really happy with them.

Nice work Evanism, sounds like a perfect fit for your trade. Have you taken some pics of your creation?