Thread: Yes, you CAN have too many clamps!

Ian, Maybe put some ridiculous price tag on the surplus ones and take them to the local antique mall to be sold as decorator items. I'm sure there's a market for them with all the new Hampton's style decorating going on.

Originally Posted by Simplicity

Ian Is this some kind of info ad,.....

Matt, I can assure you I have no desire to become Australia's first commercial wooden clamp manufacturer!

"First" might be a bold claim, there were active woodworkers 150 years ago and they would've needed clamps, so either they imported what they needed, made them for themselves, or perhaps someone manufactured a few. All the handscrews I've come across here (not that many, fewer than a dozen examples all up) were made from European woods. I would imagine anything wooden made in 1825 would have been termite tucker long before now, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone has, or has seen, very old clamps made from local woods.

I think they would have been a moderately expensive item back in their day, they are pretty labour-intensive to make. Even with lectrickery to drive a lathe & router-cutting the threads, the time component is high. Nope, these are definitely something you make for fun, not profit!

But I reckon they are well worth the effort if you have a mind to make a few for yourself. You'll find them a bit awkward at first, but once you get used to them, they are just as easy to apply as metal clamps when you have both hands free. Using them one-handed is a bit more challenging, but no worse than trying to close a metal clamp over a couple of loose cauls. What I like most about them is the broad wooden jaws spread the pressure over a wide area, so you almost never need cauls. In fact I deliberately select softer woods like Camphor Laurel for jaws,to minimise marking, I've even used Aus. Cedar. Got a couple of sets with cedar jaws that have been hard at work for quite a few years.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Ian, Maybe put some ridiculous price tag on the surplus ones and take them to the local antique mall to be sold as decorator items. I'm sure there's a market for them with all the new Hampton's style decorating going on.

A good idea, Franklin, but my practical nature rebels at the thought of a usable tool being hung on a wall as an ornament, by someone who hasn't a clue what it was used for...

Somewhere, I'm pretty sure it was in an early FWW "Design Book", I saw a giant hand-screw made expressly to hang on a wall. It was a spice-cupboard, with hollow jaws & multiple shelves. With the doors closed, they looked very convincing!

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

...Maybe start on drumsticks and work up from there... ...

Well if you consider a drumstick a musical instrument, Paul, then perhaps I have made one "instrument" connected with music. A family member took a conducting class some years ago, and asked me if I could make him a baton (even the cheapies cost far more than you'd expect for a short stick, and the big-name ones as much as a small car!!). Easy-peasy, thought I, until I looked up what was involved. They are expected to be these little slivers of a certain length (usually specified by the user according to personal taste), with the 'balance point' in a particular spot. Took me several goes to get something that was acceptable to the young maestro....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Well if you consider a drumstick a musical instrument, Paul, then perhaps I have made one "instrument" connected with music. A family member took a conducting class some years ago, and asked me if I could make him a baton (even the cheapies cost far more than you'd expect for a short stick, and the big-name ones as much as a small car!!). Easy-peasy, thought I, until I looked up what was involved. They are expected to be these little slivers of a certain length (usually specified by the user according to personal taste), with the 'balance point' in a particular spot. Took me several goes to get something that was acceptable to the young maestro....

Cheers,

Hi,
The more you learn about something the more you realize how much there is still to learn.
Regards

Originally Posted by IanW

..... In fact I deliberately select softer woods like Camphor Laurel for jaws,to minimise marking, I've even used Aus. Cedar. Got a couple of sets with cedar jaws that have been hard at work for quite a few years.

Cheers,

Australian red cedar is a timber that really fascinates me, Ian. Besides being pretty, it is very light, very soft and seemingly rather fragile.

But any number of cedar chairs from the colonial era have survived and are still in daily use. 150+ years and thriving. How much furniture from HN, Ikea or Freedom will suvive even 25 years?

Love the stuff, and it reciprocates!

Ian, you made mention of how far the clamps open but do you have any info on what reach can be achieved?

I sometimes struggle to apply clamping forces to areas well away from the edge of the job and at those times would like to have greater reach on my clamps. Presumably the larger diameter screws would work with longer jaws to gain more effective reach. Do you have any thoughts on what the limits might be for each size?

Originally Posted by labr@

Ian, you made mention of how far the clamps open but do you have any info on what reach can be achieved?

I sometimes struggle to apply clamping forces to areas well away from the edge of the job and at those times would like to have greater reach on my clamps. Presumably the larger diameter screws would work with longer jaws to gain more effective reach. Do you have any thoughts on what the limits might be for each size?

Bob, through trial & error I have arrived at a few dimensions that work for my needs, but I have by no means made an exhaustive study of clamp limits. For the 3/4 size, I use jaws about 225-250mm long by about 45-50mm wide. The centre screw is 100mm from the top, giving them a 'reach' of something less than 150mm. There have been occasions when I would have liked a bit more reach, too, but have usually managed to find a work-around. My threading gear is out on agistment at the moment, but when it comes home, I might make a couple of long-reach jaws & see how they go.

I see no reason why you could not give them longer reach provided you observe the caveat of not trying to close them off-parallel. This could be a temptation when trying to squeeze a spot well into a board, so if I were making long-reach clamps I might glue a shim a couple of mm thick on the end of each jaw (I've seen 'shaped' jaws obviously intended to serve that purpose, but a shim seems simpler & esier to me). That would allow you to put plenty of pressure on a defined area without having to have the jaws off-parallel. As I said, you don't have to be fanatical about keeping them parallel, you can have them a degree or two off, but don't try for anything much more than that.

Obviously, the thicker the screws, the more robust they are. I've loaned the 3/4 sizes to blokes who've brought them home with busted screws, despite my careful instructions on use, but so far, nobody has managed to bust any of the ones with 1 inch screws...

Cheers,

Id suppose, rather than tapping the jaw itself, one could tap through a big dowel.

Bore a dowel-sized hole through the jaw at 90°. Bore another at the right orientation for the rod. Insert dowel, insert rod.

Now we have jaws that swivel.






edit! Ahem! Just like swivel on a Jorgenson or Bessey, but massiver!

external-content.duckduckgo.com.jpg

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Id suppose, rather than tapping the jaw itself, one could tap through a big dowel.

Bore a dowel-sized hole through the jaw at 90°. Bore another at the right orientation for the rod. Insert dowel, insert rod.

Now we have jaws that swivel.



edit! Ahem! Just like swivel on a Jorgenson or Bessey, but massiver!

Yes, you could do that WP - the dowels would need to be 'massiver', alright, to take the large wooden screws & have enough wood left around the hole to bear the force. You'd need to make the jaws quite a bit bigger than I usually do, to accommodate the dowel, too. You would also need to either tap left & right hand threads on each screw & fit two barrel nuts on each jaw as per Jorgensens, or stick with the usual configuration for handscrews of two nuts in one jaw, & devise some reasonably robust way of capturing the end of the top ('push' screw) in the opposite jaw.

Nothing insurmountable; I have made plenty of wooden bar-clamps with the screw captured in the travelling jaw by a "garter" (also used on wooden-screwed tail vises): Clamp bar red.jpg

But my question would be why? One of the attractions of wooden handscrews is that they are a simple & highly functional tool, & I would be loathe to complicate matters myself, unless I had a need for clamps that can close off-parallel. As I said in the first post, my need has been rare indeed, and on the few occasions I have tried to use the "Jorgensen lite" clamps I made on something where the two outer surfaces weren't close to parallel, the clamps either just slipped off, or skewed the two pieces out of alignment. The simple solution is to make a couple of wedge-shaped cauls so a regular clamp can do the job - it's far more effective, in my experience.

Cheers,