# An exercise in making wooden bar clamps



## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*The bar and front jaw*

You can never have enough clamps, right?

I have an odd assortment of bar clamps, including some homemade clamps I made from 25mm (1 Inch) square tubing and a few wooden clamps that work with wedges. I also have some cheap pipe clamps of which the back jaw keeps on slipping under the clamping pressure.



















The other day I stumbled across this YouTube video i.r.o. homemade heavy duty wooden bar clamps.









I drew some plans to get started



























And so the journey begins.
I started by cutting the bars from some pine I have had for many years.









There was enough for four clamps plus an old door post for two more
The first four is from what we call SA Pine and the last two from the door post is Origan Pine.









Note the finer grain pattern on the Origan Pine.

I will need to do some repair work on the hinge holes from the door post.









*Update the repair*










Then I cut the blocks for the front jaw from some SA Teak that I also have had for many years.



















In the following photos that show how the front jaw goes together, the holes for the dowels had not been drilled yet.



















The whasers will help prevent the wear from nut on the front end.



















I still need to decide how to secure the front nut to the threaded rod. I don't trust the long lasting qualities of epoxy inside the block which will not be able to be opened once it is glued together. I don't want to use two nuts locked together either as this will leave the front wall of the jaw to thin to my liking. I am thinking about a solder process and a pin through the nut. I will update this blog on what I come up with.



















The next step will be the screw post and then the back jaw.

Next blogs
2) Securing the nut for the front jaw
3) Back post
4) Back jaw


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## derosa (Aug 21, 2010)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Silver brazing which is not real high temp works well for this type of thing. Or drill a hole through and run a pin through it, peen both ends and nothing will move. Looks like a good start.


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## jaydubya (Sep 13, 2010)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Subscribed. Cant wait to see how these turn out


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## mochoa (Oct 9, 2009)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Sweet. I love home made clamps.


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## KOVA (Nov 21, 2011)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...




















https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.253324391378288.68238.148976618479733&type=3
*TAMBIÉN PUEDES ATRAPAR LA TUERCA CON UNA MADERA FINA COMO YO LO HICE EN ÉSTE ÁLBUM DE FACEBOOK *


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Thanks for the feedback so far. I used a nylon lock nut plus a pin. Details in blog 2


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Kova, Thanks for the photos as well as the link to your FB page. Quite interesting.
Kova, Gracias por las fotos, así como el enlace a su página de FB. Muy interesante.


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## Kentuk55 (Sep 21, 2010)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Very genius. I likes em a lot. Sure beats the high prices they ask for parallel clamps.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Roger,

Thanks for the kind comment.

If I had to buy the 6 clamps that I am busy making (almost finished), it would cost me about R2000 ZA (aproximately $240 US at the current exchange rate) Actual cost was all in all about a R100 ZA ($12,5 US) for the hardware. The wood is free from my shop that I collected over the years. If I had to purchase the wood it would cost a bit more, but nothing close to the price of shop bought clamps.

I wont say that I saved R2000 because I won't spend that kind of money on clamps even if I had it to spend (which I don't), but that I gained that value in tools plus the satisfaction of making a tool that will be useful. This by far outweighs anything else.


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## rance (Sep 30, 2009)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


I like seeing folks build their own tools. Good one here. Nice drawings too BTW. What did you use to do those?

Might I suggest that you increase the size of the triangle gusset since it won't affect the clamping capacity? It would also serve to keep the movable block nicely aligned.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


Rance

Thanks for the suggestions.

I used Microsoft Power Point to draw my plans since I have not had the time to go through the learning curve for Sketchup (that is still on my to do bucket list as I like the 3D capability of Sketchup).

When drawing the plans the idea of the gusset was to strengthen the back post. Your idea of increasing the size of the gusset makes sense. I decided however not to put the gussets on because my mortise and tenon joints came out nice and tight (thanks to my kerfmaker). I decided that would be strong enough, but added five dowel pins just for in case. On my test clamping, the movable block did not show any tendency to wander so far. If it becomes a problem when I start using the clamps for real glue ups, I will consider adding a larger gusset. For now the gusset does not seem necessary.


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## rance (Sep 30, 2009)

George_SA said:


> *The bar and front jaw*
> 
> You can never have enough clamps, right?
> 
> ...


I like the KISS method too. It looks good.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Securing the nut for the front jaw*

Thanks to some good suggestions from fellow LJ's (derosa and Kova) I secured the nut by using a nylon lock nut that I managed to get in town today (the local co-op only has 10 & 12mm nylon lock nuts) and just to make doubly sure I used a pin as well. This is probably over engineering, but I don't want the nut to come loose after the jaw has been glued together.










I have some 5mm nails which supplied me with a tight press fit pin


















After peening the pin, I'm sure it will stay there forever and a day 









Other blogs in this series
1) The bar and front jaw
3) Back post
4) Back jaw


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Back post*

First I cut the mortise and tennons













































A nice tight fit thanks to my kerfmaker









A 25mm hole for the nut and a 16mm hole (not shown) for the threaded rod.









Six nuts pinned to the threaded rods


















The nut is press fitted into the hole









A test dry fit




































The problem with the hinge holes from the door post fixed









Previous blogs
1) The bar and front jaw
2) Securing the nut for the front jaw
4) Back jaw


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## FatherHooligan (Mar 27, 2008)

George_SA said:


> *Back post*
> 
> First I cut the mortise and tennons
> 
> ...


Interesting. I'm going to have try these out.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Back jaw*


















































































Previuos blogs in this series
1) The bar and front jaw
2) Securing the nut for the front jaw
3) Back post


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## derosa (Aug 21, 2010)

George_SA said:


> *Back jaw*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Looking good so far, I really need to make some of these to get started on my headboard. They look stiff enough to do the job for a lot less then the size I need.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Front Jaw*

The components for the front jaw


















A whaser in the front of the nut and at the back of the nut inside the jaw



























Insert the dowels after gluing









Put the pressure on!









Before and after sanding









Poly drying in the sun









Now to drill the half holes in the bottom of the bars. Clamp two clamps bottoms to each other









Use a drilling jig to get the holes evenly spaced or use a caliper to mark them. (I switched to the caliper after the first pair as it was faster than moving the jig each time.)


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Saddle supports for the bar to rest on*

The original plan was to affix feet to the bottom of the bar. I decided however to make some saddle type supports in which the bar fits.









Six pairs stacked









Partially finished clamp resting on the saddle supports









Bottom view of the saddle support sitting on the bar. It is not fixed and can be moved around to suite the table space availble.









I still need to ad the winding handle









Almost finished. Phew this is taking longer than I thought it should!


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*The crank handles*

The clamps are almost finished! All that is needed are the crank handles.

First I cut some 10 mm round bar from my steel scrap heap,








.

which had to welded together
















.

Next I filed a notch in the threaded rod
























.

and then I welded the crank handle to the threaded rod


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*Reflections on the journey*










I have one working clamp and five in the last stages of finishing, so the journey has not quite ended, but it has progressed far enough for a final blog entry.

I found this an interesting and satisfying journey with some knowledge gained and skills improved.

*Insights gained:*
*1)* This journey took longer than I at first anticipated, but isn't that part of life? Projects are almost always over budget and they take longer than planned. Fortunately I did not make a specific budget for this project and maybe that is why the overall costs for this project is fairly low. Items I had to purchase was, the threaded rod, nuts, washers, poly finish and some dowel sticks. Al in al I estimate about R200 to R250 ZA ($25 - $30 US) which is not bad for six bar clamps that would have cost me about R2000 ZA ($250 US) if I had to buy them.

*2)* Some aspects of the making becomes tedious when making a batch of six clamps, especially when you have to make up batches of six and twelve components. However, if I did not take this route I would only have had one or two at the most.














































*3)* Some planning before I started has payed off. My plans provided good direction signposts during the journey, even though I deviated from them slightly as I went along.

*4)* My experiment with back block payed off. I decided to use wood in stead metal for the holding bars. The tests so far show they are quite solid, though only time will tel on how they hold out in the long run. If they do fail at some point, it wont be too much of a hassle to replace them with beefier wood or metal.









*5)* If I had to go this route again, I will not use normal pine for the bars as the knots tended to introduce warps end bend bends in the bars that had to be planed out. I don't have a jointer, so this proved to be quite a bit of a task. I got some practice using my stanleys though, so it is not all bad. My skill with hand planes still has a lot of room for improvement, thus the final result is not as good as it would have been from a jointer. For now, however, I think they are straight enough, even though they are not perfect. I worry that in future some warpage will return. I put a good coat of poly on to hopefully prevent this. This happened in spite of the me having the pine slab for many years. I had hoped that it was seasoned enough so that there would not be wood movement after cutting. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of wood movement. In the future for a similar project I will rather go for a fine straight grain hardwood, even though this may cost a bit more. In the end it will still be cheaper than shop bought clamps. The two clamps that I cut from the Origan pine door post are quite straight. Maybe this is because of the finer grain pattern of Origan pine.









All in all, I enjoyed the journey and would recommend it as a worthwhile endevour.

The final project post is over here.


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## Dennisgrosen (Nov 14, 2009)

George_SA said:


> *Reflections on the journey*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


thanks for taking the time to make and share both the blogserie and the project
well done

Dennis


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## Dave10 (May 29, 2012)

George_SA said:


> *Reflections on the journey*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


A Great build. These are a good combination of function and beauty.


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## Kentuk55 (Sep 21, 2010)

George_SA said:


> *Reflections on the journey*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


A very gr8 blog and build. Appreciate all your photos, and what you did. Very well done. Very good lookin clamps.


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## George_SA (May 4, 2012)

*SketchUp plans*

I decided that it was time to upgrade to SketchUp. I used my Heavy Duty Bar Clamps as a learning exercise. I made a few modifications on the original plan regarding the front jaw. The plans can be downloaded here.

Another mod that I would suggest is to use steel or aluminium for the draw bar on the back jaw as the wooden dowels don't fare so well when pressure is applied.


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