Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Hand Tools). This thread is read-only.
What type and brands of clamps do you all prefer? I picked up four more Bessey GSCC clamps this morning, 36″ this time since I mostly have 6″ and 12″. Those seem decent for the price, though I also like the Irwin and DeWalt trigger clamps.
I’m in the market for some long clamps for gluing so will be following this thread closely. From what I’ve read so far it’s a choice between parallel and sash clamps, and from what I read parallels can fail so sash it is?
I have a few short Stanley Bailey F clamps which seem to no longer be made which I quite like. Before that I tried a few quick release clamps of different manurfavtures that all seemed to fail under load.
The go-to clamps I use are these antique bar clamps. I also have the pipe clamps that are useful.
The features I like most on the bar clamps are: the large surface area, to avoid / prevent marring the surface; the locked-in orientation, so rotation between the ends is impossible and the HUGE amount of clamping force available.
The pipe clamps are flexible, just get a different length pipe. It has acceptable clamping force. There are small, circular pads, so I use scrap blocks when I need to avoid marring the surface.
This style clamp is available new from current sources.
The link shows my clamps.
/forum/topic/14371-wingless-hand-tools/
I’ve got some Bessey and a lot of Jet parallel clamps. Love both brands.
fm2176 wrote:
7 hours ago, fm2176 said:What type and brands of clamps do you all prefer? I picked up four more Bessey GSCC clamps this morning, 36″ this time since I mostly have 6″ and 12″. Those seem decent for the price, though I also like the Irwin and DeWalt trigger clamps.
Also have several Dewalt extra large trigger clamps, various lengths. My favorite trigger clamps I’ve ever used. The faces are full depth so lots of contact points with project.
I have quite a few Jorgesson Parallel clamps, i love them, can’t find them now but rumor is they’re back in business, have quite a few bessey bar clamps too, if you can find the german made ones thats the way to go
Also just got two Bessey Kliklamps, first impression… not impressed but well see after they get some use
Id like to try out the Bessey Gear Clamps, those look pretty nice
JimboS1ice wrote:
On 1/7/2019 at 8:29 PM, JimboS1ice said:I have quite a few Jorgesson Parallel clamps, i love them, can’t find them now but rumor is they’re back in business, have quite a few bessey bar clamps too, if you can find the german made ones thats the way to go
Also just got two Bessey Kliklamps, first impression… not impressed but well see after they get some use
Id like to try out the Bessey Gear Clamps, those look pretty nice
The Kliklamps are pretty weak INMO, I regret buying them. I should have just retuned them.
SetBuilder wrote:
The Kliklamps are pretty weak INMO, I regret buying them. I should have just retuned them.
Yea got them the other day… first impression… shit
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First off, I hate Pipe clamps. Now with that said.
My favorite quick clamps are Stanley Fatmax xtreme, they are super strong. They stopped making them awhile ago, but come up on Ebay now and then
I like the old school clamps that don’t slip. The green ones I bought used a while back, they have detents so you can crank on them and they won’t slip.
These Stanleys are nice, but again not available anymore. Clamps are so pricey these days, best to shop craigslist and ebay and buy lots of older clamps.
I forgot about these ones…
https://www.harborfreight.com/48-in-aluminum-bar-clamp-60540.html
Believe it or not, they ain’t too bad. I bought eight of them for a real sloppy glue up of some heavy legs and they did me justice.
SetBuilder wrote:
11 hours ago, SetBuilder said:These Stanleys are nice, but again not available anymore. Clamps are so pricey these days, best to shop craigslist and ebay and buy lots of older clamps.
I have three if the smaller ones and was looking the other day to buy more and I noticed that had stopped making them. Boo.
ChrisK wrote:
I forgot about these ones…
https://www.harborfreight.com/48-in-aluminum-bar-clamp-60540.html
Believe it or not, they ain’t too bad. I bought eight of them for a real sloppy glue up of some heavy legs and they did me justice.
I’ll have to add them to my harbor freight approved list ha ha I’ll check them out
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@Cynan The newly updated Bessey K Body Revo clamps are awesome. I got a few and they have never slipped once. Their strength is plenty for any project I have used them for. I recommend going with parallel clamps. Bessey is the best option in my opinion for parallel clamps. You can find a decent price on the 24in and the 50 in at home depot. Quite a bit cheaper than anywhere else when I bought mine last year. The new model has KRE in the name. Pricing on other sizes are kinda strange so I wouldn’t buy any other sizes. Acme tools has a better selection of the KRE clamps and prices of other sizes are better than HD. Jet is probably a close second. I’m not a big fan of pipe clamps. They are a reasonable low cost option for long glue-ups but not ideal in my opinion. I have never used the sash clamps. They seem pretty similar to Parallel clamps. Triggers clamps have their place. The speed and connivence are great. I use them in conjunction with my parallel clamps. Trigger clamps for your average everyday clamping tasks and the parallel for heavy duty clamping jobs like glue ups. I hope this helps.
Cheers @Jronman. I’ll try find one somewhere local (and in the UK) to go take a look in person. Hesitant to buy a load to find out they aren’t what I’m after.
I always buy different on Amazon here
ChrisK wrote:
On 1/5/2019 at 8:01 AM, ChrisK said:I’ve got some Bessey and a lot of Jet parallel clamps. Love both brands.
It looks cool 😉
After using the clamps for almost 40 years, I can proudly say that there is a huge difference between them. For the clamps from Europe, I can recommend Trexi since it has an aluminium core, which is good for stabilization and adjustability. However, this kind of brand is not so popular in the US, so American brands will be good for you as well. Recently, I have been using toggle clamps from sandfieldengineering.com and the quality of it is way better than other junk on the market. Along with quality, it may cost you a lot of money to buy such clamps, but it is worth it.
I use Bessey clams. I like them. I also have some pipe clams from Irwin, also good ones.
These DeWalt quick-clamp style track clamps are my favorite. I’m not familiar with the Kreg Accucut system, but one of the comments on the DeWalt clamps says they work with it. I know that the DeWalt clamps work with most other popular track systems (Makita, Festool, Bosch, etc)