The Ultimate Trigger Clamp Showdown - 12 Clamps Compared

let's meet our clamp contestants for today up top here we have our three different clamps rated at 600 pounds each by erwin dewalt and bessie over to my left and to my right we have four different clamps rated at 300 pounds of pressure by irwin dewalt bessie and jorgensen down here across the bottom we have actually three different offerings from harbor freight including their newest product which is the bremen rated at 375 in the blue and orange we have two different pittsburghs we have the 287 pound rated clamp as well as the six dollar favorite here this is one of the ones i'm most curious to see how it does this one is not rated for any particular weight and over here on your left we have the wood river rated at 180 pounds and last but not least the bessie duo clamp now when it comes to special features eight of these have really nothing out of the ordinary they're just standard clamps they do their job but four of them do have some special features worth looking at the erwin 600 pounder has a couple of cool features number one it's got pivoting heads on both sides and you can actually pull those pivots off and just replace the pad directly if you need that straight perpendicular pad the other nice feature is it has a little stand so if you do want to hang the trigger end of your clamp off the edge of a table like this it can stand upright on that little stand and the other end of the clamp pretty convenient it's little brother the irwin 300 pounder has one of those pivots on the outside end but not on the inside and does not come with the stand the jorgensen has one really special feature up its sleeve and that is that you can replace the ends like this swap them around and then those two pieces fit together like puzzle pieces making one huge clamp so with that the two trigger ends come apart and you get a 54 and 5 8 inch clamp when you put two of these together that is a pretty sweet feature the bessie duo clamp has several things going for it it's called the duo clamp because it has pads on both sides of the bar which is really convenient you can use it to push or pull and then my favorite thing about this by far and the reason i go to this one quite a bit is because of the orientation or ergonomics of the trigger it's in a great spot additionally you can actually just twist this knob right here to make it go forward or backwards for spreading or clamping it's a pretty cool set all together the next thing i wanted to figure out is how many squeezes does it take to get to the center of the lot to travel 24 inches is what i was going for so i marked the exact spot on the bar where it was in one spot pulled the trigger completely and then marked how far it had moved after i moved my head so on the irwin you'd need to squeeze the trigger 165 times to move 24 inches on the bessie also 165 the dewalt again 165. the bremen requires 91 squeezes the irwin 374 squeezes the bessie 300 118 squeezes the dewalt 300 70 squeezes the jorgensen 300 84 squeezes the harbor freight pittsburgh only needs 44 squeezes we may have a winner here ladies and gentlemen the bessie duo 97 squeezes the wood river 123 and the harbor freight six dollar clamp 62 squeezes so for results all three of the 600 pounders tied at last place with 163 squeezes and the pittsburgh heavy duty wins with only needing 44 squeezes to travel 24 inches next we're going to test what i call slide ability for lack of a more scientific term but basically a lot of us keep our clamps on racks or shelves like this and you want the ability to squeeze on in on the release and then put that up like that hold it in place and then pull it off pretty easy too so you want it to be slidable or have great slide-ability sure that works so since we've got the irwin here let's show this one off and see what it can do this is the irwin 600 and it can go kind of tight but actually those pivoting those pivoting heads make it a little tricky to get tight so this one falls out of line with all of its neighbors here because of that that said it moves pretty comfortably this one tends to move on its own fine once it gets going no i mean this one does not want to go [Applause] here's the dewalt 300 pounder all right time for the jorgensen piece of cake oh no don't disappoint me oh this is too rough not slidable but the idea the concept of being able to do it like this is perfect it's the most ergonomic design but this thing doesn't slide it's doing nothing okay then it goes in pretty good now one tip on these is you can actually lube these you can use some wd-40 and that shouldn't affect the ability of it to actually clamp down on something a lot of people worry about that you should be able to put some lube on these bars and help it to slide along a little better next up let's see if the clamp force rating on each of these clamps lives up to its claims like this one for example this dewalt says 300 pounds over there so we're gonna see if it can actually pull 300 pounds now to do that i've got this really high tech and super well done jig here despite my many minutes of welding experience these welds look like total trash so if you feel like you know making fun of those in the comments you're welcome to because it deserves it but on the bright side it actually holds up i've tested this and it works pretty well and it adds a little sense of you know surprise here maybe one of these welds will snap off altogether and we'll have an explosion or some sort we'll see keep in mind though with clamping 300 pounds is more than you need for most glue ups for example for woodworking so soft woods like this pine here for example typically only need about 100 psi maybe 150 at most and then a hardwood like this walnut here 175 to 250 is all you need for that oh yeah i almost forgot there's two other things we're testing at the same time here let's see how much these things bow because we don't want a huge massive bow going on the second thing we'll test is how hard is it to release so let's see how it goes okay we're going to start out with the irwin 600 pounder let's see how many pounds of force this thing can pull and let's get started all right we're already at 350 and when i let go it does drop a little bit slowly i mean kind of slowly we're already down about we're down to 345. very interesting so it doesn't retain that same pressure that whole time let's keep going and see what we get 550 okay we just went over 600 for a second but then it drops quickly okay we went over 600 again 597 see if we can get it to where it actually okay we are seeing that boeing in the bar that i talked about okay that went up to over 6 30 and it's sitting at 6 25 right now error oh wow i wonder if this one peaks at 650. i think it does yeah 670. okay this is sitting at 668 right now very difficult to squeeze and definitely bowing quite a bit and let's see if it comes down to the 670 range or not that means we're over 670. all right there's our arc on the on the bar now in order to measure how much deflection or bowing we got with the bars on each of these when they were under their max load i took a screenshot of each of those at that point now keep in mind the camera is the exact same distance away from the bars in each case and so i was able to take that into photoshop draw a straight line from one end to the other to see what it should be and then i used a measuring tool to measure how many pixels away that was from the straight line at its greatest distance i could then compare that to each of the others and put it on a scale to see which ones bowed the most or the least the irwin in this case came up with a deflection of 26 putting it in the better half of the clamps now the next thing we'll test is the release i hope this thing does oh wow we're at 680 something okay so this one goes over 680 and so definitely holds up to its uh 600 pound rating a little afraid to do this but here we go this is hard this is a two-hander definitely a lot of force to release at 680 plus pounds but it did the job and well surpassed the 600 pound rating now i put together this quick infographic for each of the clamps including a bunch of stuff that i measured off screen that we're not going to include in the video to keep this thing from being like 240 minutes long so you can see on the clamping force this one rated in at 114 percent of its reported capacity with 680 pounds or 309 kilos it's got a couple of cool bonus features slide ability on this one we recorded at above average deflection a little above average like we just talked about squeezes per 24 inches as bad as it gets takes forever to travel releasability on this one was dead average with a five and then the comfort on this one was just slightly above average you can see some other specs on the bottom in case you're interested and i'll show those with each of the clamps but you can get full details on all of this on my website at learn2diy.com links are in the description next we're going to work on the bessie 600 pounder that was quick we just passed six okay this one moves a lot faster as far as getting up to that full pressure okay i think this one is basically about the same as the irwin this one can go over 680. there we go got a decent little bow going on now let's test out our release here this is notice the trigger is kind of loose to start with here we go please let go oh geez that freaks me out okay uh hold on i gotta go change the bessie 600 also scored 114 percent of its reported capacity with 680 pounds no bonus features slightly below average slidability above average deflection again some of the worst squeeze rates out there average releasability and super high on the comfort level next up let's test the dewalt 600 pounder it'll go over what it uh claims by quite a bit actually i'm really curious my crappy welds are you know they're holding up i'm happy with that this one's on the edge of the bar so that's easier but this little piece here is a real piece of work all right here we go let's release this and see how it goes okay that was actually the easiest one to release so for what it's worth at full pressure the release bar on the dewalt was the easiest so far the dewalt 600 very similar to the prior to 114 percent of reported capacity no bonus features above average on the slide ability slightly above average on deflection bottom of the barrel on squeezes per 24 inches average releasability and very above average when it comes to comfort this is one i'm probably most curious about we're going to test the bremen from harbor freight rated for 375 pound now it's using all my wrist power which is like six pounds worth uh 230 go harbor freight i love it when the cheap stuff actually does okay i kind of root for it like the underdog [Music] my weak little body can't handle that 429 yeah basically we're capping out around 4 30. but for a rating of 375 not too bad so 4 30 we've got some serious arc going on here and then let's test out the release ah there we go that one was not as bad actually as i thought okay so that that release was uncomfortable because it's just bar metal like most of these but it did pretty good the bremen had almost the exact same reported capacity as the prior three with 115 percent again no bonus features above average slide ability really poor on the deflection this one the bar bent the most squeezes per 24 inches was slightly above average releasability also slightly above average and also slightly above average on the comfort when it comes to price the bremen actually comes in at just over half of most of its competitors next we're going to try the irwin 300 pounder [Music] this is like my workout of the week here 404. i just worked out last year i don't know why i'm doing this so i'm learning that there is kind of a threshold for these you kind of get to a point where you squeeze all you want and it can't really get any more out of it so 430 in this case pretty darn good let's test the trigger release on this guy here we go i hate this maybe i can't all right do i need a rig i need oh you know what i cut some clamps here is this dorky or what i'm going to use a clamp to release the clamp you know desperate times here we go yeah that's the way to go that's so much easier okay so the irwins are pretty jolting to release for sure on that trigger release the irwin 300 has our best reported capacity so far at 143 percent of what it claims it does have the one pivoting pad as a bonus feature not very slideable at all this one was pretty tricky deflection was pretty average squeezes per 24 inches was above average releasability also pretty difficult and totally average when it comes to comfort next is the bessie 300 pounder one thing i'm noticing on this is that because these clamps are closer together the triggers here the handles it's easier like it feels more comfortable i don't feel like i'm having to spread my hands way out so i'd say that's a bonus point for the bessie here this is as much work out as i get oh we're up 436 here now again we've got this guy here for the release let's see how difficult this is whoa that was super easy holy cow i wasn't ready for that okay so so far the release on the bessie is by far the easiest and that was under max load so that's pretty impressive the bessie 300 comes in at 145 of its reported capacity no bonus features to speak of extremely slideable this one worked great in that sense very average deflection slightly below average for squeezes per 24 inch great releasability easiest one yet and as far as comfort this one is definitely on the high side as far as being comfortable as well next up we have the dewalt 300 pound setup 424 so actually very comparable to the other ones we saw not too bad at all now let's test the release on the dewalt seriously let's test the release on the dewalt [Music] got it that was about all my might though i almost couldn't do it the dewalt 300 also comes in well above its reported capacity with 141 percent there no bonus features to speak of slide ability was not great on this one deflection was just barely below average squeezes per 24 inches this one travels pretty decently above average slightly below average on releasability and then the comfort was also doing pretty well next up is the jorgensen 300 pounder whoa this is a beast 590. we're sitting at 590 on this thing it's rated for 300 pounds oh my gosh let's see how the trigger release goes easy okay impressive that was really easy to release went way past its range and was pretty strong that's pretty cool the jorgensen 300 is the best one we've seen so far as far as what it claims to actually be able to squeeze in what it does 190 percent of reported capacity it does have that super cool interlocking design so a nice bonus feature it's super slidable this one is about as good as it gets when it comes to mounting this thing onto a rack deflection is pretty average squeezes per 24 inches above average releasability also quite a bit above average and it's super comfortable as well next up this one i'm super curious about this is the pittsburgh that's rated for 287 pounds these things are dirt cheap so i'm that's why i'm curious to see what it can do 343 i think that's about where we're peeking out this thing's rocking up into the whoa now what was that oh you know what i think this just oh look i broke it that's actually kind of exciting all right here we go here's the break check it out so i broke right up here at the head and it was at about 480 when it did that i'll check on the playback but definitely took it way past but this is our first break it's kind of exciting so snap the plastic right there reveal the weakness so did it do everything it's supposed to and more yes but it did have a breaking point of course so rest in peace little guy so the harbor freight pittsburgh 287 pounder came in at 120 percent of its reported capacity no bonus features extremely slideable did great there excellent deflection this had the most stiff bar of all of the ones we tried the squeeze is for 24 inches also best in class this one moves and you don't have to sit there squeezing a thousand times to get it into position releasability we weren't able to test that of course because the thing snapped comfort slightly above average so pretty interesting results for the harbor freight pittsburgh next we're going to try the bessie and this is rated at 280 pounds but remember i couldn't get this in the 24 inch so i'm just testing out the 18 inch so i've got a little extension piece with the carabiner on here no idea what this carabiner is rated for but let's find out i'm going to zero out our scale and here we go this is so much more convenient by the way this design i love this so i think that's about where we're going to stop here is 308 not bad so this that's 28 pounds more than it's rated for let's test the release now now again with this release it's right up here on the thumb area very curious how hard this will be not a one-handed thing at full pressure oh but not too bad with two that was actually easier than i thought the bessie duo clamp came in at 110 of its reported capacity making it the least amount of all of the other ones as far as actual capacity versus reported but all of them at least surpassed the reported capacity by 10 this one has some killer features on it and is by far the most comfortable to use in my opinion because of that angle of the trigger the slide ability was not great it could use a lot of help there deflection we didn't really get to test on this one because of the 18 inch versus 24 squeezes per 24 inches was pretty average releasability above average and comfort usually the most comfortable one to use in my opinion next up is the wood river 180 pound rated clamp so 414 on a 180 pound rated clamp i'd say that passes the test so pretty good let's see on the release here pretty easy okay very impressive way to go wood river this one was a surprise this one came in at 230 percent of its reported capacity no bonus features to speak of extremely slideable it hangs up really nicely deflection was pretty average squeezes per 24 inches could be better so definitely below average there releasability absolutely above average and also more comfortable than most all right this is probably the one i'm most excited about this is the six dollar clamp what do you get for six bucks let's put this thing in and find out this thing looks just cheap and pathetic in all the ways but is it we're at 243 let's see if we can get this thing to 250. i believe in you come on little harbor freight six dollar guy okay my belief is limited it's not uh my faith is not strong enough let's see let's use your cousin here to help you out okay we're at 350 now obviously i haven't released but i'm just [Music] was curious if that would happen okay i got my heart rate going for the day both in uh squeezing all these clamps and in you know jump scares there we go so this one is definitely dead but it went way past what it probably should do so i think it broke at somewhere around 3 50. i'll watch the playback to verify but check this out we've got we've got parts everywhere and no nils's were injured in this video so at least not yet okay harbor freight's little six dollar clamp came in at definitely above what we maybe would have expected with 243 pounds and again it didn't claim any certain number in its advertising bonus features really nothing to speak of slide ability just above average deflection just above average squeezes per 24 inches one of the easiest ones to use in that sense releasability we didn't get a chance to test that one before it exploded and as far as comfort this one's slightly less comfortable than most now because i had all this data i had to see just out of curiosity what does it look like as far as pounds of pressure per dollar that you get so as you can see here harbor freight is definitely kicking butt in that aspect there's so many other things to take into consideration here but i thought you might be interested in seeing exactly how this plays out again you can see a full chart of all of the compared specs one against the other on my website at learntodiy.com well i'd say that was a success i only wet myself three times and we broke two clamps but we got some real good measurements on everything else now the big question is and leave this in the comments below which clamp would you buy after seeing that love to hear about it thanks for watching see on the next one

Channel: LRN2DIY Woodworking

Views: 58,132

Keywords:

Id: mg8apnt3NwQ

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 19 2022