Best Wood Clamps

Wood clamps are an essential part of everyone's tool kit, clamping together various joints when hands alone won't suffice. The most essential being a workbench vise .

The vise is secured to the front section of the bench approximately 12" from the end. To the right if you are right handed.

The vise should fit flush with the front and top and its jaws fitted with plastic or wood caps to prevent damage to your workpiece.

A quick release fitting ensures speedier clamping and release and if you are going to the expense of a bench vise, I would insist on this. Stanley like mine, Irwin and Draper are good makes of all clamps.

Quick Clamps

Often we'll need to join materials unable to be held in a vise and for a long time we used 'G' clamps which are wound or tightened by hand. They are available in lots of sizes starting from as small as 2".

To a large degree these have been replaced by a squeezing clamp in which the tightening handle slides along a bar. They are known as 'quick grip' and have an easy tightening and release trigger.

Much easier to use than the 'G' clamp providing you can give them a good squeeze and we all need one of those now and again.

For a good selection of both follow this link to clamp

Cramp on the Floor

Two floor clamps are best for any tongue and groove flooring jobs.

The jaws of the wood clamps tighten between the floor joists as you increase pressure against the floorboards. I always place an off-cut approximately 30 " long, between the clamp and floorboard to prevent crushing of the floorboards.

If you are secret nailing, you want the tongue to be the front edge so that you can angle nail through the tongue.

If you are not secret nailing, you can cut and place up to 5 widths of floorboard before clamping and nailing. Any more than that you will find the boards spring up.

Don't nail the front edge, it makes it harder for the next board to lock in.

Corner that Sash

Sash clamps are similar in style to quick grip wood clamps in that they tighten along a bar. They are used to clamp long or wide workpieces such as sectional table tops, window frames and door assemblies.

I've found the most difficult joint to fasten is the butt corner joint. Fortunately corner clamps make the task much easier. Without the corner clamp the joint keeps slip, slip, sliding away.

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