[ Motor whirring ] [ Whirring stops ] ♪ It's time for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

Today, we're building clamps -- five money-saving, time-saving clamps.

It won't take you long to build them, and you'll find dozens of great uses for them.

Let's get started.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

♪ Additional funding provided by... ♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

♪ And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Chris, you were one of the designers for these clamp projects.

What's the attraction here?

Well, the attraction is a little bit of hardware, some wood you probably already have, and you can have a great selection of clamps that can handle all sorts of woodworking chores.

And I think what I like about them is that, being special-purpose clamps, they're things that you don't always need, but if you were to try and buy the whole range here, commercially, it's gonna be pretty pricey.

And they're not even all available.

Yeah.

So, what do we have here?

Well, these are edging clamps to help glue edging onto panels.

And then we have this frame clamp, which will help out with mitered picture frames, and one really nice detail is we're using speed nuts, so they're really fast-acting.

Which is really nice because depending on the size of frame, you could end up spending quite a bit of time just threading on a knob -- And we all have better things to do than that.

[ Laughs ] And it's really not easy gluing up miters, is it?

No.

And then we have a deep-reach clamp, and it's one of those things not often needed, but when you need it, you need it.

You need it.

Here is what I like, are these simple cam clamps.

They're easy to build.

I'd like to have a dozen of them.

Yeah, and I think they're probably the most general-purpose of the ones that we have here, and I know that I could use quite a few of them myself.

And then, finally, down here, on the end, are these oddball ones, but these clamps are for every time somebody finds out that you're a woodworker, you get asked to fix something.

Chairs, not just one chair, many chairs.

Yeah, many chairs.

So these clamps are designed to easily grab onto the round legs and rungs of a chair and pull them together without dinging them up.

You'll find plans for all five of these great clamps at WoodsmithShop.com.

Think it's time to start building.

Let's build!

Now, if you ask me what my clamping nightmare is, usually, a chair is at the top of that list.

The round legs plus the splay of the legs makes getting even, good clamping pressure pretty difficult.

That is unless you have a chair clamp like this guy.

Basically, this is a pair of jaws.

One is fixed, and one is movable, and they're assembled on a piece of threaded rod, and there's a speed nut here that allows you to quickly release tension and move the jaws where you need them without having to thread it the whole way.

What makes this guy really great is the actual jaws.

They're rounded, and that means that they're gonna hug the legs of the chair and get good, even clamping pressure, and they won't slip.

These really aren't bad to build.

Let me show you how.

So, we have to make a pair of jaws, and those jaws start off as one blank that is cut in half.

Then over the table saw, use a dado blade to cut a groove down the length of it.

Once the groove was cut in both pieces, I used the threaded rod as a spacer, and I glued and clamped that together and let it dry.

Then I cut up two jaw blanks, and I have one of those here.

You could see I have a pattern applied here.

The plans come with a pattern, and whenever the plans come with a pattern, I usually print it off and use it because it's a whole lot easier.

So now it's a simple matter of cutting this jaw to shape, and then we'll head over the bench and get them assembled.

[ Saw whirring ] ♪ So, after you have your jaws cut out with the band saw, you have a little bit more work to do.

The first thing you're gonna want to do is clean up that inside radius, and I did that with a drill press with a drum sander.

Then you're gonna take a trip over to the router table.

What we're gonna do at the router table is rout a radius around the whole perimeter of the clamp with a couple of exclusions.

The first is gonna be on the end where the rod hole comes through the clamp head.

You gonna want to leave that square.

And to do that, I just left a mark on there and plunged it into the bit, but I didn't go past the mark, and then I did that on the opposite side, as well.

And then the stem of the clamp, you're gonna want to leave those square, as well, and this is just so the washer has a good area to ride on.

Now, the roundover is pretty important.

It's not just decorative.

For a chair clamp, because the legs are splayed, the pressure points are in the corners of the jaws, but by rounding those over, we eliminate those, so it's not gonna dent up your leg.

So, how does one of these clamps go together?

Let me show you.

So, first thing you're gonna want to do is to put a washer and a nut on the end of your threaded rod.

Then your first jaw slides on.

Then you're gonna want to cap that with another washer and a nut, so that guy is fixed.

Now it's just simple matter of sliding the other jaw on with a washer, and you could see how that washer seats up against that flat that we left on there, and then the speed nut.

The speed nut slides on, but as soon as you start tightening it down, the threads engage, and it tightens it down.

Then you can just slide this guy on a chair, slide the nut in and give her a couple twists.

And honestly, there's not a better clamp out there.

But that's not your only option with this chair clamp.

You can reverse the jaws.

So instead of putting this jaw facing in like we did on the clamp, you can also reverse the order and put the nut on first, facing out, then a washer and then the final jaw.

Now, that looks goofy, right, but this is the perfect spreader.

In case you have a chair that you need to repair, you can stick this inside the legs, and then by twisting the knob, you can drive the legs out and disassemble it.

For something that's usually a clamping headache, a simple clamp like this that you can build in honestly a couple minutes is the perfect solution.

Every woodworker runs into a situation in their shop when they need a clamp that can reach in deep and tighten down solidly.

Well, if you've ever had those times, I've got a clamp that's easy to make, and we're gonna show you how to make it today.

It's the woodsmith deep-reach clamp.

It only consists of a few parts.

There are two hardwood jaws, as you see here.

They're attached at the back with a hinge, a 1/2-inch carriage bolt, a handle with a coupling nut and a washer -- simple as that.

But this clamp is handy, can open to a wide range of capacities.

You're sure to want to make several for your shop.

Now, to get started, I'm going to begin by laying out my sides on my blank of hardwood, and my first step is to go to the band saw, and we're gonna do that now.

♪ ♪ Well, I've finished sanding the jaws, and I also eased the edges a little bit.

Now, couple things to point out -- one, make sure that the grain is running parallel to the length of the jaw for maximum strength.

Two, note that the end of the jaw is rounded slightly, so no matter how open or closed the jaws are, they'll still bear evenly on your workpiece.

Also, this top of our jaw is not parallel to the bottom.

When we look at the two jaws together, they need to be able to close tightly and have room to open, so this is not parallel to the back.

Now, with all that said, our next step is going to be to drill a 1/2-inch hole for our carriage bolt, and in the other jaw, I'm going to drill a 9/16x1-1/2-long slot to give the top of the carriage bolt a little room to move.

♪ ♪ But with the jaws of our clamp done, it's time to move on to the handle, and the first step in making the handle is going to be to drill a 13/16-inch hole through our handle blank.

Now, that hole is to accommodate this -- a coupling nut.

Now, 13/16 may sound like kind of an odd number, and it is, but it's just the right size for a snug press fit or a coupling nut with a little bit of epoxy into our handle blank.

Now, after I've drilled this hole, the next step is going to be to band saw the side profile of the handle out.

When that is done, I'll add a top profile and follow that with a band saw, as well.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ To complete the handle, what I'm going to do is put a little bit of epoxy on each side of our coupling nut, so epoxy within the hole in the handle blank, and then I'll press the two together using this F-clamp.

Now, the reason for the F-clamp is when I push this coupling nut through the handle, I'm gonna get a little bit of epoxy coming out the back, and it'll just make a little easier cleanup.

♪ ♪ Well, that's the last screw for the hinge that holds the two jaws together.

Now, while my two jaws are both in the vise, I'm going to go ahead and insert the carriage bolt in place, and then I'll take the washer, put that on the carriage bolt followed by our completed handle.

With this assembly in the vise, I'm gonna go ahead and tighten the handle to the point where it pulls the head of the carriage bolt securely into the lower jaw.

And there we go.

So this is our completed deep-reach clamp.

All it needs is a couple coats of oil... ...and a project to work on, and it's done.

I've admired the look and the function of these classic cam clamps for years, but it turns out they're surprisingly pricey to purchase.

However, with just a little bit of shop time and some bits of aluminum, you can make your own.

Now, what I like about these clamps is that they're lightweight, and they don't apply a lot of clamping pressure.

Doesn't sound like much of a clamp, does it?

But when you're working with smaller assemblies like boxes and small parts, I've found that standard bar clamps, when you start to apply pressure, the weight of the clamp and the pressure that it applies can actually distort the project, and you could end up with some real problems down the road.

What I like about these clamps, though, is how simple they are.

There's a fixed jaw that's pinned to an aluminum bar.

Then there's a sliding jaw here that has a offset cam that, when you apply the lever, it presses against this flexible tongue, and that applies the clamping pressure to your project piece.

It's pretty simple, but if you're gonna make one of these clamps, you might as well make a few of them, so I want to show a couple of steps that'll help simplify the process to make a number of these clamps pretty quickly.

It all starts with creating some oversized blanks.

Now, for example, this is one of the blanks for making the sliding jaws.

So with a single blank, I get two of those jaw pieces, and that way, I can set up a particular power tool and do multiple steps and be able to set up kind of a production run for these.

So, with this blank, the first thing that I'm gonna do is head over to the table saw and use a dado blade to cut a stop slot that accepts that cam lever.

From there, I'll switch out to a regular blade, and I'll cut a slot across the back of both this blank and the blank for the fixed jaws, and what that does is house the aluminum bar that the jaws are gonna either be pinned to or slide along.

From there, it's time to head over to the drill press, where you're gonna drill a series of holes.

First are some larger holes that define the inside curves of the shape of the jaws and then switch out to smaller bits to create the holes for the pins to lock the jaws to the aluminum bar as well as for the cam lever.

And that brings me right here, to the band saw.

So what I'm gonna set up to do is cut a stopped kerf that will create that tongue for applying the clamping pressure.

I can do that on all of my sliding jaw pieces.

♪ ♪ Cutting the clamp jaws to size and shape is actually pretty simple.

It's just a matter of connecting the dots where the two drilled-out radiuses are, and then you can round the edges and then cut the finger notch on the edge of the sliding jaw, which brings us here, where we're ready to assemble one of the clamps.

Now, the first thing that we're gonna do is take one of the fixed jaws and then a piece of aluminum bar stock.

Now, you can cut these to any length that you want really, but shorter clamps generally work better with this type.

So I'll just slip the bar into the kerf that we cut earlier, get it fully seated.

Then I'm gonna use a drill and use the holes that we drilled in the jaw earlier as a guide to drill through the aluminum.

[ Drill whirring ] [ Blows air ] To secure the jaw to the aluminum bar, we're gonna use some short pieces of aluminum rod, just little dowels, that will fit into those holes, and then you can tap them in place.

On the sliding jaw, you'll still use some pins, but they don't go through the bar at all.

They just fit into those holes that we drilled.

Then you can install the cam lever on the front part, and that just slips into its channel, and that's held in place with a slightly larger piece of aluminum.

And then that'll slide right onto the aluminum bar.

Now, you may have to do some sanding on the bar or on the slot to get it to slide smoothly.

Once it's done, though, the last step is to take some cork and glue those to the inside face of the jaws.

That'll cushion the grip from the clamps and prevent the clamps from marring your workpiece.

Once it's done, whether you make two of these or a dozen, you're sure to find a lot of uses for them in your shop.

Clamping up miters seems like a pretty simple task, but if you've ever done it with clamps, then you know that one little adjustment in one corner can throw all the other corners out of whack.

So what you need is, you need a clamping system that can hold even pressure in all the corners and hold those miters at 90 degrees.

That's where a miter clamp like this really shines.

It holds all four corners at 90 degrees, and it applies even clamping pressure to keep everything square.

So basically, this clamp consists of four blocks connected together by a threaded rod.

I started by gluing up those blocks.

They're simply two layers of plywood that are glued together, and then they're cut square.

Then I took those over to the table saw and used a tall auxiliary fence on the miter gauge, and I clamped the workpiece to it.

Then I made a cut, removed the workpiece and rotated it 90 degrees and made another cut, and that left me these L-shaped brackets.

After I was done with that, I took a trip over to the drill press, and we have two holes to drill in each of these "L" brackets.

One hole is through, and the other hole is stopped.

I drilled those in all four corner brackets.

Then at the band saw, I cut these bases to size, and they're really just cut square, and then the corner is dog-eared.

And those simply get glued onto the bottom of the corner brackets.

And that's what I have here.

I have two of these guys glued up.

So you could see I have one hole that goes completely through.

Then the other hole is stopped.

What we're gonna do now is, we are going to epoxy in the threaded rod into that stopped hole.

Make sure it's in the right hole, then gonna apply a bead in there then also apply a bead onto the threads just to make sure we have good contact.

Then let's apply some there.

Then I'll simply spin that in place until it seats all the way in.

I'll set that over there to dry.

Now, one other thing I'm gonna do while that epoxy is curing is, I'm gonna glue on a pair of cork pads.

That's just gonna keep the clamp from dinging up the corners of the miters.

That's gonna give it a little bit extra grip, too.

Glue those guys into place.

Alright.

I'm gonna let these dry, and I'm gonna finish up these other corner brackets.

Then I'll show you how this goes together and how it works.

Alright.

So, once you have all your threaded rod installed and your corks on all the inside of your jaws, you're ready to go ahead and assemble them.

So let's take a look at this and see how it goes together.

So, each of these has a threaded rod epoxied in a hole and then the through hole.

So really we're just gonna work in a pinwheel configuration around until we have them all in place.

There we go.

And now, for our adjustment and tightening of these, we're gonna slide a washer and a speed nut onto each threaded rod.

There we go.

Honestly, it's pretty simple.

So, let's take a look how this works.

So, I have a couple pieces cut here of a frame, so we're gonna need to adjust these out, and the cool thing about these speed nuts is, you can back them off a little bit, and then you just pull them out to adjust them.

So, we got that guy.

That one in place.

Now, of course, on a picture frame, you'd have this glued up, but I'll show you without glue for now.

Okay.

Then once they're all in place, and everything is tight, you can go ahead and engage these speed nuts, and you're just gonna rotate them to tighten them, and you'll feel those threads engage.

Then you can just work your way around the frame, keeping the top even and giving the knobs a turn as you go.

And there we go.

It's the perfect clamping solution for those tricky miters that can start slipping on you.

You should tighten them up.

This clever little edging clamp deserves a place in your shop.

It works in tandem with an "F" clamp.

The bar of the "F" clamp engages this notch right here.

A thin tapered wedge slides into a kerf, and that kerf then expands, and these cork pads apply firm, even pressure on edging that you're gluing to a panel.

Now, making these couldn't be simpler.

We start with the notch that holds the "F" clamp.

From there, we move to the drill press and put a relief hole at the end of this kerf.

Then it's off to the band saw.

We first make this long kerf for the wedge, follow that by two profile cuts and the necessary cuts to make the wedge.

That's all there is to it.

Add the cork feet, and you're ready.

With a clamp that simple and a clamp that clever, you need to make at least a dozen for your shop.

Clamps may not be the most glamorous of tools that you have in your shop, but they're some of the most essential if you're gonna build great-looking projects.

Today, we built five special-purpose clamps.

It includes a chair clamp for assembling or repairing any kind of chair.

We have a deep-reach clamp to help you get clamping pressure right where you need it.

A clever frame clamp comes in handy for assembling mitered frames of all kinds.

These cam clamps are handy for small projects and assemblies, and these edging clamps are just a unique way to apply hardwood edging to plywood panels.

You'll find plans and patterns for all these clamps at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

And the best part is, is each of these clamps can be built in just a short amount of time with a small amount of materials and without spending a lot of money, and we'll see you next time, right here, in the woodsmith shop.

♪ [ Saws whirring ] ♪ [ Sander whirring ] ♪ If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

♪ Additional funding provided by... ♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

♪ And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... ♪