Pipe Clamp Comparison (Bessey vs Pittsburgh/Harbor Freight)

okay so I wanna do a quick review comparing the 3/4 inch pipe clamps one Pittsburgh which comes from Harbor Freight and the other is a Bessie so the Bessie runs about 16 dollars after tax and the Pittsburgh is gonna be about eight dollars after tax if you use a coupon at Harbor Freight so the Pittsburgh is half the price of the Bessie I just want to kind of do a quick overview take a look at them side-by-side maybe clamp some stuff up and see if it's really worth twice the price for the Bessie or if you can get away with just getting the ones from Harbor Freight so let's get these unboxed and put on some pipes okay I've got this clamps unboxed and they're on place and we're ready to do a little bit of a side-by-side now this isn't anything major couple scientific but it's just kind of a subjective review of how they feel and the difference between the two so to start with the best see in the back here the threads on there feel pretty smooth and the threads on the harbor freight feel a lot rougher a lot less smooth a little clumsy almost and when it comes to sliding the other end of the clamp here a little more pressure is needed on the Harbor Freight then is on the Bessie here I have pretty good grip strength I mean I guess if you had the massive hands these would be this would be pretty easy to operate one-handed but that is a slight advantage of the best he looks like that it's a little easier to operate it also looks like the best see here is a little bit higher so the feet on here or maybe half inch taller I can see that coming into use if your propping up a piece that you're clamping up and gives you a little more space underneath so let's get a piece of wood in here see how it feels clamping up [Music] yeah you can really tell the difference in the smoothness of the Bessy over the Harbor Freight I'm wondering if you put a little grease on the threads on this Harbor Freight if that might not help a little bit but I'm just looking at the threads you can tell that the ones on the best here a little better machined so another difference too is that the Bessie here has these synthetic covers on the ends to help with marring on the wood no it seems like they come off pretty easy there now if these are gonna get damaged or if they're gonna get lost that would be an issue but it looks like underneath here even if you pull these off you have a very super smooth surface on the end here versus on the Harbor Freight the casting is really rough as you can see there so if you're gonna clamp something down really hard you're gonna need to sand a little more or remove significant more wood to get rid of some of that marring if you really do need to clamp something up hard because this is very rough it's definitely gonna leave a mark even with slight clamping now see if I can get this side off so this is on here pretty good there's a couple of screw holes on these Harbor Freight so you could put a couple of pieces of wood on here or whatever else a couple pieces of leather on wood to help with marring but if you were to go the metal this this does have a little bit better casting than the Harbor Freight so you can definitely tell that there is a bit of a difference in quality between these two Hey and the fit and finish on the Bessie is quite a bit better I guess I wasn't expecting that but it makes sense so if you want a good clamp I think this Bessie is is way to go if you really want to save the money this Harbor Freight will probably get the job done but it just doesn't have quite the feel and fit and finish of this and I'm also wondering longevity-wise whether or not this is gonna last quite as long as this one here I mean they're both cast irons so they're probably both gonna last forever but I do like the feel of the Bessie and I think I actually might get a couple more of the best sees if you got that extra eight bucks and you know long term you're gonna be using these vices a lot and the operations just a little bit easier it's a little smoother you're not really having problems with them you might be worth at xray bucks if you don't quite have that money you need to get some vices quick Harbor Freight you know it won't let you down but I guess that's that's the general rule for Harbor Freight normally anyway you know if you need something you're not gonna use very often or you just need something that's cheap and quick a lot of times that's the way to go but if you want to get something quality that's gonna last you a long time you think you'll use it a lot maybe Harbor Freight isn't the best option so I hope that's a good review between the two I think there are even though they're just vices there is somewhat of a significant difference between the two so I'd be curious to hear what some of your experiences are using each one of these long-term

Channel: Maverick Makers

Views: 46,378

Keywords: Pipe, clamp, clamps, pipe clamp, bessey, pittsburgh, harbor freight, vise, vice, vs, compared, comparison, review

Id: 9nImM61Ps3Y

Length: 6min 25sec (385 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019