Woodworking with very few clamps (maybe only 5).

people are always saying to me rex we are getting killed by the high price of clamps everybody knows that a woodworker cannot have too many clamps but they are expensive and you are the low-cost build-it-yourself tool guy so show us how to build some clamps and that is a good idea i should do a low-cost clamp build but you know anytime i do these shop-built tools i really like to look back in history and see how people did it you know before you could buy the tool so for this project let's look back at the domini's the dominis ran a big busy cabinetry and clock making shop in rural long island in the 18th and 19th century for the time it was a serious operation a lot of square footage three benches and three or more workmen working at the same time and we still have all the tools and shop supplies the domini's used so we can just look at their clamps and what's really interesting is they had fewer than 10 clamps in the whole shop for three workmen that's crazy but it does make you think if the domini's master craftsmen doing really high level work if they could get by with so few clamps well maybe we're going about things all wrong maybe we can be doing our woodwork with a lot fewer clamps maybe we don't need any maybe we could do woodwork with no clamps at all god now that i said that i'm i'm like getting butterflies in my stomach i think i'm having a panic attack [Applause] maybe instead of spending a ton of time or money on clamps what we need to do is just rethink the way we do woodworking so what do clamps even do i know this sounds like a trick question but it's not i think for most woodworkers clamps are used to hold two pieces of wood together while the glue dries in between them but that makes me think well maybe we're relying too much on glue let me give you an example here's a standard dovetail nothing special about it and it's got an interlocking shape so it holds itself together even without glue i can just dry fit the parts together and it's a pretty good hold obviously we're going to use glue in our final joint so it stays together for decades but what's interesting is we usually cut our dovetail joints pretty tight this is so we get a gap-free look to the joint and it's neat but cutting the joint tight also gives it a lot of internal pressure when i put glue on all the surfaces and press the joint back together again everything is squeezed together really tightly there's plenty of force for the glue to set and i don't need any clamps the joint basically is its own clamp now that's all very well for dovetails but we use so many joints and woodworking what about all the other joints what about the mortise and tenon good question i've just cut this mortise and tenon and as i'm putting it together just with hand pressure i can feel that i've got a nice tight fit that glue is going to have plenty of pressure to set up but i can't get that shoulder to close just with hand pressure now i think what anybody would do here is put glue in the joint then grab a clamp and use that clamp to push that shoulder together you get a nice tight joint while the glue sets up so we need a clamp for this joint right well maybe not maybe there's a way to make this joint clamp itself just like the dovetail here's how we can do that with the joint disassembled i'm going to bore through both the cheeks of the mortise at the same time then i'll put the tenon back in and use the point of my auger bit to mark that hole then i'll move that hole just a little bit toward the shoulder of the tenon and bore through it with the same bit when i reassemble the joint i've got intentionally misaligned holes and when i drive an oak peg through those holes that misalignment pulls the joint together and drags that shoulder closed it's a perfect looking joint and rock solid and you might have noticed something while i was doing this i didn't put any glue in i didn't forget that was intentional this is called a drawboard mortise and tenon and this is the way most or maybe even all mortise and tenon joints used to be cut if you go back to the 17th century this was pretty much the standard way of doing it this isn't some weird technique it was totally mainstream and it requires no clamps at all okay so i can do a couple of joints without clamps but there is so much more to woodworking what about big projects what about casework i mean are we really gonna make a cabinet with no clamps well believe it or not yeah i did it last summer i made a big cupboard for my kitchen and i did use some clamps in the project but for the main case i didn't use any instead i used simple rabbit joints in the corners and of course i used some glue because rabbit joints don't stay together on their own but instead of clamping up the case i just drove some fine finishing nails through those rabbet joints that gave me plenty of hold while the glue set up and i ended up with really solid joinery there was a big shelf in the middle and i used dados in the sides to hold that and then glue and a couple of finishing nails through the sides of the case to hold it in place while it dried i didn't use any clamps for the main case of this big four foot cupboard but i still got a tight clean assembly and everything fit together really precisely now obviously there are some aspects of woodworking where glue is not optional like if i have two boards and i want to join those together to make a larger panel i'm only going to do that with glue but i might be able to do it without any clamps so here i am making the doors for that big cupboard project and it's just two big pieces of white pine joined in the middle to make a large panel now usually you would clamp these but here's another approach i'm screwing a couple of battens down to my workbench putting the panels in between them and then just tapping in some little hardwood wedges those actually give me plenty of clamping power they're just as good as using a commercial clamp especially if i throw a little weight in the middle to keep things from bowing up i can also do something really similar with just a single clamp and this is great if you don't want to screw anything to your bench i'm just going to prepare the joint the same way but plane it a little bit lower in the middle this way when i put the two boards side by side the joint will touch at the ends but not in the middle i can throw one big clamp over the whole thing and as i tighten it the ends will touch first and slowly the center will come together that bow that i planed into the wood creates a lot of tension a lot of internal pressure and allows me to get a really good joint even though i'm only using a single clamp this is called a sprung joint and it is a super traditional way of doing things it's great if you have a couple of clamps but not a lot i admit it is pretty weird for me to be doing an anti-clamp video when i am literally surrounded by clamps but most of these clamps are left over from when i was a custom builder and when you're doing stuff like that making big boxes out of plywood stuff like that you need a lot of clamps there's a lot of woodworking where you need clamps but the point of this video is there's also a lot of wood working where you don't need clamps or maybe you just need a couple now you might be thinking about building your own and i've done a lot of research on that i've bought a bunch of old examples and you know what clamps like this this is a pretty involved project it's going to take a lot of time and effort and you have to be a pretty good woodworker to make something like this i don't think the time and effort are justified clamps are really expensive if you're going to buy a lot of them but if you're only buying a couple they're actually super affordable i'd like to suggest that you can do a huge array of woodworking with just five clamps they're not going to cost a ton of money and they're readily available the first clamp i recommend is at least one really long clamp this one is 42 inches long and i think that's perfect i use this clamp for gluing together boards into large panels but i also use it as kind of a third hand so here i'm putting this assembly together and you can see it's not cooperating it's a little bit twisted there was nobody around to help so i just used my long clamp to pull everything square while i finished it up it was really no problem and i only needed the one now this clamp is in what's called a pipe clamp style you can get these in pipe or bar there's a couple configurations i think the pipe clamp is the strongest and it's also pretty economical you buy the hardware all this orange stuff here and then you just go down to the home center and you get threaded pipe and you put the whole thing together yourself you can get these in either half inch or three quarter inch sizes i have a lot of both and i find the half inch is honestly just fine you could also have it shorter than this and then you can make longer clamps when you need to just by using a pipe coupler it's just a threaded collar and it lets you join two pieces of pipe together and make a super long clamp when you need to when you have a clamp like this you really only need one because you can use techniques like the sprung joint to put together bigger glue ups where you usually need a bunch of clamps i also recommend a pair of medium-sized bar clamps these are also called f-clamps for obvious reasons and the ones i use most often are 28 inches long but you can get them a little bit shorter or longer for whatever suits your work now i really like pipe clamps for my heavy duty clamping but for more medium and light duty stuff i like these a lot more they're easier to handle because they're lighter and then the jaw here also has a pivoting pad these are really good for gripping something that might be a little bit tapered what a lot of woodworkers use these clamps for is getting stuff attached to the bench top and they are perfect for that they give you a really solid hold but because they're smaller and less bulky they're also low profile so if i want to come in here and chisel or rasp there's nothing to get in my way because the clamps are sort of small also because they're small they're a lot better for clamping lighter smaller furniture parts so here i am a couple weeks ago putting together a sub-assembly from my small shaker table i've got two legs and an apron here they don't weigh very much if i used a big pipe clamp it would just tip over and that's a whole other set of problems these smaller lighter f style clamps don't over balance and so i've got less to worry about clamp number four is the good old adjustable twin screw clamp i know a lot of woodworkers don't like these but i think some people don't understand how to use them the jaws here are independent which is really handy because they don't have to be parallel you can grip some weirdly shaped stock with them you also have to understand how to get your maximum clamping force out of them you have two screws and you use the front screw to set the distance and to get your jaws parallel or angled once you have your jaws set up right and you have your work piece in the tip right here you use the rear screw to set the pressure and what you do is you turn the rear screw so the rear jaws spread apart it pivots on the front screw and delivers astonishing clamping force right here so much clamping force in fact that i actually don't use these for glue ups they're too strong for that i use these as auxiliary work holding they're just as strong as vices so i use clamps like this as an extra vise i'll clamp one down to my bench top and use it to hold small or irregularly shaped parts or i'll take one of these and put it in my leg vise that elevates work up much closer to face level and i can work on smaller parts without bending down it's really convenient screw clamps are also really easy for me to store because i work in a basement and there are floor joists all over the place so i just have my screw clamps clamped to one of those joists and when i need one i just do this it couldn't be easier clamp number five is the lightweight spring clamp i think a lot of people don't like these because they're small and they don't deliver a lot of force but sometimes that's exactly what you need because they won't mess up your work these clamps are also self-adjusting so sometimes i'll be working on a project and i'll need to stick a little piece of wood to a larger piece of wood like if i'm building a jig and i have to put a little stop block on these are perfect i put a little glue on my small piece i put it on my larger piece i stick my spring clamp on there walk away come back 10 minutes later pop it off and i'm good to go these don't deliver a lot of force but they really couldn't be more convenient and since they don't grip very hard they really won't dent your work you can probably get by with one of them but i don't know if you can even buy one i think they only come in like multiples these metal ones have a little bit more clamping power these nylon ones have adjustable pads on them so they'll grip different type of stock more easily it doesn't make a huge difference what you go with quick word on clamp brands i've had the best luck with pony jorgensen i won't say they're the best manufacturer because i haven't tried everything but they've been dependable for me pretty much throughout my career for all the clamps i'm talking about here i will link to everything down in the description so you can see the exact models that i'm talking about you know when i first started woodworking all i could do was fantasize about how big things were gonna get i was gonna get bigger machinery a bigger shop three-phase power industrial equipment it was going to be huge i'm an american we love it when things are huge but what's weird is things have gone in the opposite direction instead of getting bigger my work has gotten smaller my machinery use tapered off and now i don't really use any i'm mostly a hand tool guy i have a big shop all to myself and i mostly just use this corner about 25 of it and what's weird is as things have gotten smaller my work has just gotten better and i think it's because when you have less crap to take care of fewer tools you're not thinking about all the stuff you have to clean and dust and lubricate and maintain and keep track of all that stuff is a distraction from doing the work i think what's much better is to have a small kit of really good tools and putting your time into learning how to use them that way you're wasting the smallest amount of time and putting all your resources into making good furniture that's the way i want to work and you can see i have all these clamps around here but if you look back over my videos you'll notice i don't use a lot of clamps i really get by with just a handful i think you can too anyway people seem to really enjoy these little philosophical chats i give at the end of some of my videos if you like this kind of thing you should sign up for fabrication first it's my free e-newsletter that i send out every month and it's just an original article on some aspect of woodworking once in a great while i'll promote something like a new plan or a project but 99 of the time it's just free original content that you get just so we can sort of stay in touch and on the subject of clamps i also want to mention steve ramsey he has a great video about clamps he's a power tool guy and you'd think he would recommend a million clamps but he says no you only need nine just a few more than i recommend steve and i do things in a totally different way and you might think i don't like his videos but i actually love them steve's a real inspiration to me you should go watch his video and subscribe to his channel i will link to that down in the description too just like always i have to shout out my patrons on patreon i think by now everybody knows that youtube does not pay us a lot for making these videos you got to get your business happening some other way and my business happens through patreon my patrons provide not just the monetary support to keep this stuff going but also a community people i can bounce ideas off of friends in the craft and for all of that support i give them a lot of stuff back they get free plans they get exclusive content they get everything early maybe you want to be one of those people if you do go on over to patreon.comkrueger and check out all the rewards i have for the people who make this stuff possible i'll see you all next week for another great woodworking project thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 1,032,693

Keywords: woodworking, woodworking clamps, clamps, clamp, wooden clamps, woodworking class, woodworking tips, diy clamps for woodworking, woodworking tricks, wooden clamp, diy clamps, wood clamps, easy woodworking, woodworking bar clamps, homemade woodworking clamps, bar clamps, bar clamp, pipe clamps, cheap clamps for woodworking, woodworking clamps for beginners, woodworking plans, woodworking tips and techniques, woodworking hack, woodworking hacks, wood clamp, beginner woodworking

Id: rGD6vZ57y9s

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021