By
swirt on October 29, 2018 at 11:20 pm in
tools •
Comments Off
A few years ago I saw these bar clamps made by Sergio Acuña Padin on Youtube. His channel is full of clever, inexpensive tool builds. I liked these clamps because they were simple, effective and cheap. They are perfect for panel glue-ups. I have quite a few pipe clamps, so I didn’t really have a need for more clamps, but the other thing that is great about these is that they function as cauls to keep the panels flat during glue-up. I have a big panel glu-up coming up, so I set out to make three of them.
Here is the parts list to make 1 four foot clamp.
- One 1″x2″x8′ (I used Poplar but Pine would work too)
- Two 6″ by 3/8″ Bolts
- Two 3/8″ wing nuts
- Four 3/8″ washers
Here is all the parts needed to make three clamps that are 4′ long. I cut each of the 8′ boards in half. If you don’t plan to ever do 4′ wide glue-ups, you should make yours shorter.
After taping two 48″ sections together to make a single clamp, I walked off 3″ steps with my dividers. I set the fence on my drill press and proceeded to drill holes with a 7/16″ bit. The slightly larger bit makes the bolts slide in and out more easily.
After all the holes were drilled, I went back over them with a countersink bit to clean up the ragged edges and make it easier to put the bolts in. Glue-ups are stressful enough as it is. No need making it difficult to slide the bolts in.
I labelled the clamps with Top and bottom and used a plane to slightly bow the top caul so it is a little thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges. This helps make sure there is a bit of pressure in the middle.
I also marked each pair with identification lines so that you can quickly see which top goes with which bottom.
I wanted to be able to hang them up to get them out of the way. My shop is set up with french cleats, so I made them use that. Though in honesty they could hang on a nail or long screw just as easily. I started by cutting one end of the clamp at a 45 degree angle.
I had some french cleat sections and just cut off six small pieces. Then glued them, one to each bar of the clamp.
The idea is that each clamp will hang off the previous clamp.
Here they are hanging on the wall. Three clamps taking up very little space.
Too keep glue from sticking to them, I wiped down the edges that will touch the glue-up with Johnson’s Paste Wax.
In use, the bolts provide the force on the caul to keep the panel flat and aligned, but the clamping force is achieved with a wedge or wedges driven between the wood and the bolt. You can see from the squeeze out that it is creating plenty of force. Ideally this should have two wedges driven in opposite directions to create the force. These long wedges I already had for clamping on my bench. They are a bit too long for this use but they worked fine.
Here are the three cauls in use on a large Southern Yellow Pine glue-up. The main clamping force is create by the pipe clamps, while the caul clamps keep everything aligned. With it all clamped up, things seemed a little springy, so I added an f-clamp on each end. It probably wasn’t unnecessary but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
This glu-up went pretty smoothly largely due to the use of these clamping cauls. Three seems to be a good number for this panel which is 18″ by 55″ Could they replace the pipe-clamps? Yes I am pretty sure they could. Fortunately I don’t have to make that choice, I can use both.
Tools to build the clamping cauls
Previously
- $4 Planing Stop
I have a bunch of dog holes on my bench and a bunch of bench dogs of various thickness. However, in practice when I am face planing a board I can almost guarantee that the bench dog will either be too thick, causing the plane to catch the top of the dog, or in the […]
- Driftwood and Hurricane Shelves
I call this “The shelves that blew in.” It is made from a driftwood root and some wood that Hurricane Maria blew down in my neighborhood in 2017. Back in April we were walking on a beach near Stump Pass in Florida. My son was looking for a stick to play with and grabbed what […]
- Black and Decker Electric Chainsaw
I recently needed a chainsaw to take care of some wood that had found its way to my driveway. I pulled out my 16 year old 16″ Poulan chainsaw that had not been used in over 10 years. I quickly discovered that all the fuel lines had deteriorated. So I bought replacement lines and filters […]
- Safety glasses – my favorite Radians passes the test
Safety in my workshop is important to me. Especially eye safety. One of my eyes is in pretty bad shape (not from the workshop) so it makes me all the more protective of my one good eye. Over the years I have gone through a lot of safety glasses. Many of them have failed due […]
- Gang Saw
I wanted to build a frame saw for resawing wood, especially large slabs. Previously my resawing logs technique has either been to use my bandsaw milling sled for smaller logs or my one-man rip saw for logs that won’t fit on my bandsaw. Then I thought about the old saw mills that used to use […]
- Snakeskin Ring
The other night, the cat was watching something intently that was just outside the pool cage. When we took a look, there was a corn snake laying on the rocks outside the pool cage. He had just started shedding his skin. We watched him wiggle out of the thing 1/4″ at a time. It was […]
- Rose Petal Ring
A few weeks back I made a ring from shavings off a mango branch, followed soon after by a ring made of cat hair. With Valentine’s Day approaching, my son wanted to try making a ring from rose petals for his mom. So we bought some roses and some super-glue and got to work. We […]
- Log Toggle Coat Rack
I have seen a bunch of these flip down toggle coat racks and have been intrigued by the designs. Modern and unobtrusive. Toggle a peg down if you need it, up if you don’t. I find them clever, but they are too modern looking for my taste. So I started imagining one that was based […]
- Mango Shavings Ring
I was planing a piece of mango wood for a coat rack I am making, when I got completely sidetracked by something. The shavings were so pretty, the urge struck me to try making a ring out of them. I have never made a ring before, and for the past 24 years I have only […]
- Live Edge Oak Coffee Table
I got a nice section of a Swamp Laurel Oak log from a neighbor that was cutting one down a little over a year or so ago. I wrote up a post about slabbing an oak log by hand. The entire time I was sawing the slabs out of that log, I knew I wanted […]
- Making a Tapered Slab
You can’t throw a stick without hitting someone that has posted a youtube video about making a router sled and using a router to plane a slab of wood flat. They have become very common. I have covered making a router planing sled and what router bits to use for planing. Usually router sleds are […]
- Router Planing Bit Options
I built a router sled back a while ago to use in flattening some slabs. Over the course of flattening multiple slabs, I have had the chance to try a few bit options. Keep in mind that when planing with a router, you want to only have half the bit working at removing wood. So […]
- Curvy Bow Ties – Fun with Woodworking Keys
I have seen a few variations on keys. The wood bow ties that are mortised in cross-grain to prevent further splitting of a crack in a slab of wood (aka dutchman). I’ve seen dark wood keys in light wood, light keys places in dark wood. I have seen fancy carved keys in the shape […]
- Coping Saw – Blade Direction – You lead, blade follows
Almost every coping saw being sold today is set-up wrong. They are backwards. This is not a discussion of the push versus pull in terms of does it cut on the push stroke or the pull stroke. Most of them are set up to cut on the pull stroke, and I am fine with that. […]
- Latex Paint Tacky on Furniture: FIX IT
Though I much prefer the look of real wood, there are some pieces of furniture in my house that are painted. I’ve painted a few with latex paint. The problem is the tackiness. No matter how long I let the paint dry, even years later, it still feels tacky to the touch. Set something […]
- Natural Oak End Table
A neighbor was cutting down an oak tree back in April 2016. I stopped to help, and some pieces followed me home. Then they started talking to me. The log on the left said, “I want to be live edge slabs.” The one standing up on the right said, “I want to be and end […]
- Alcohol Based Tea Stain
As I started planning my next projects using the Oak that I had slabbed, I knew I would want a bit of color. I wanted to accent the grain of the wood and not hide it, so I was leaning toward using a dye rather than a stain. My only problem was that I have […]
- Slabbing Some Oak by Hand
In April of 2016, a neighbor around the block was cutting off parts of an Oak tree in his yard. I offered to help him. While I was helping him move some of it, the wood started speaking to me, and several large pieces ended up following me home. The log on the left saidi […]
- Easy Router Sled
A while back, a neighbor was cutting down an oak tree that was either a Southern Live Oak or a Swamp Laurel Oak. I tried to ID it using this oak tree guide but I no longer have access to leaves or acorns from that tree. They are pretty common, seem to grow fast and […]