Thread: Clamping Hints

Hello all
I may be able to offer some insight into this area. My occupation is as a scenic carpenter (I build sets for plays and movies) and work extensively with wood and metal. Most of the things I am called on to build are usually quite large and they are one offs. Most of the woodshops I work in have wooden floors and this allows me to attach little plywood blocks to the floor to hold everything in place while it is being welded, working on the floor has the added bonus of being able to use the plywood lines on the floor for squaring up the jig, to keep the floor from burning and wrecking the weld I will often use a small piece of copper to shield the floor. When building 3d things I try to do sub assemblies and then use various right angle jigs to hold the assembles in the right orientation, I can then weld the in-betweens in. The shops I have the pleasure of working in generally have very flat and level floors the helps a great deal in keeping things square and to a great extent prevents you from welding any twists into your work. If you floor is uneven you can compensate by using a level or sighting across the frame to see if it’s twisted and shim accordingly. I prefer not to work on the floor but the size of my work often prevents me from doing it off the floor. On smaller stuff I can sometimes work on a bench or sawhorses. I will post a couple of photos showing some of the techniques I use. The little plywood corner units are very useful and are easy to make I will post some more photos of them in use when I get a chance.
Darrell
P.S some of the photos are posed just to demonstrate.

.....................bloody good one 12teeth..........!!