Clamps & Clamping - Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration

I'm Tom Johnson, Thomas Johnson Antique Furniture Restoration in Gorham, Maine. One of the most commented on and frequently asked questions is all the different types of clamps we use here. As you know, doing repair work we get in a lot of really tough clamping situations. A lot of pieces are, when they're new, are assembled then shaped. Now we've got to glue them back together and it can be very difficult. One of the most commonly kind of clamps that we use are these fast action clamps. They can be used for a lot of different things and all different kinds of situations that we find ourselves in here. Also we call them deep engagement clamps because there's this distance. This is short, just a couple of inches, but a lot of times you need to get around one object to clamp another object and then you get in situations where you want more depth. This is a heavier duty fast action clamp, maybe three inches. This one gets up to four inches and then of course we have a few of these monsters. This is a nine inch fast action clamp. The other type of most commonly used clamps is spring clamps. They're good for clamping, you know, around edges, veneer things, small objects. They're easily operated with one hand so you can hold the object, clamp it, and spring clamps are great for so many different things. Obviously you have a short distance here, they cannot reach in far, although they come in different sizes. Some clamps like this can be quite powerful. This is a nice type of spring clamp. This has a screw here that adjusts the tension on the spring, so it's the only spring clamp I have that you can adjust the tension because sometimes a clamp like this is too powerful if you're going together something that's delicate. And so the other most common type clamp is pipe clamp and I think a lot of people are familiar with pipe clamps and they're used primarily because of the length involved. So we use them a lot to glue chairs together or anytime you're gluing boards together to make a tabletop or a leaf. Obviously there can't be any obstructions in the way because they only have, you know, a one inch depth here. If you're gluing together something that has obstructions, that's when you would go more with a, you know, a deep engagement clamp like this. The big advantage of pipe clamps is that they're relatively inexpensive and you can get all different length pipes and you can use the same head and tailstock on different length pipes. This is a slightly different type of head and tailstock but you can see the length of the pipe and then they also make a smaller size like this. Now when you get into a long pipe clamp, they have a big disadvantage in that these pipes, believe it or not, become flexible and they will bend under pressure and that's why they're really substitutes for a bar clamp. A bar clamp obviously has like a steel beam, is a much stronger clamp, they're also much more expensive. So I have a few long bar clamps but mostly we use pipe clamps. In the same sort of category of clamps are these clamps which are, they have a bar here as opposed to a pipe but it's very small, it's weak, but it's in the right direction here and these are one-handed quick clamps, you know, you can clamp it like that but the reason I have two of these than the main thing I use them for is this headstock is reversible. It comes off of here, you stick it on the other end and now you have a spreader clamp and frequently we're trying to get things apart, you've seen me do it in many videos and sometimes you really need to spread something and this type of clamp makes an excellent spreader clamp. So fast action spring pipe and bar clamps are the most frequently used clamps but we have lots of other clamps for different specialty situations. This is, you know, a C clamp, I think everybody's familiar with C clamps, appropriately named. Most of them are shorter ones like this, they have a very short distance here. This one obviously has a nice six inch distance, you can really reach into something and of course you're limited by this space here. This is a specialty type of C clamp, this is for clamping things to edges of tabletops. These screws clamp down to the tabletop and then this will push say a block for veneer on the edge of a table. Another type of clamp I like using a lot and don't use very often are hand screws, also very familiar to a lot of people. They're easily adjusted in size to make it smaller, make it bigger and they have an advantage, they do much the same thing as a clamp like this but they do have an advantage in that the two jaws do not have to run parallel to each other so you can get at weird angles of things. These also come in a lot of different sizes, this is a large one, this is the smaller one. Talking about clamps, I'm frequently referring to the reach of the clamp which is really critical and an important dimension that you need to know in any clamp. One clamp that I have here, this is a welding clamp and it works just like vice grip pliers do, you can adjust the tension but this has an 18 inch reach and you can reach like say for instance over a tabletop and glue down a veneer bubble right in the middle of the tabletop so these really come in handy. And of course another type of clamp that people are very familiar with is web clamps and we have two different kinds. This kind is very commonly sold in hardware stores and used for all types of different uses but in the furniture trade it really comes in handy. It has a ratcheting mechanism here so you go around your object feed it through here and ratchet it tight. Web clamps have limited use, they don't have a lot of power, they're better for holding something together, they won't bring a round object necessarily together as tight as you want, it really depends on the design and we're usually working with odd shapes and designs. And of course this is a big web clamp and this we would use for big sofa frames, victorian parlor chairs and it's not a ratcheting mechanism, it's a screw type mechanism so you go around your object, you pull the strap tight and then you provide the tension. This clamp can be really strong and will really hold something big together when you need it to. Another type of clamp isn't a clamp at all, masking tape. You've seen a lot of my videos, you can tape something together and it will really hold and we use this mostly for say veneer repairs on table edges. You can hold down a piece of veneer, pull this tape tight and it really holds it tight. And something I've used very infrequently which you can use too, is clear wrap tape. This also, if you can hold an object together and then get this wrap tape around it really tightly, it will also hold very well anything. So this could come in handy once in a while for some really oddball shape that you're trying to clamp together. Another technique is the rub fit. Sometimes when putting say glue blocks in different places on a case, you can't clamp it, it's not very practical to clamp or it's 90 degrees. So you can put glue on one object, apply glue to the other object, let them dry for a few minutes, rub them together and when they stop moving like that, when you can't move it anymore, it's tight, it's together. It doesn't require a clamp. We've been talking about using clamps to clamp up glued objects together, but clamps are used a lot to hold objects, say to your bench while you're working on them. You know, you'll see me use a lot of these fast action clamps to clamp a board down to the bench. Spring clamps can hold boards in place when you need them, router jigs and stuff. But the most commonly used clamp for that type of work is your bench vise. You can't really do much without a bench vise. It can hold an object for you, so it gives you a third hand. So I think I've covered all the different types of clamps. Obviously I have a lot of clamps. I used to have a much larger shop with three or four employees and believe it or not, a lot of days we would have used all these clamps. I'm a smaller shop now. I still like having a big variety of clamps. They come in handy and you know, they look pretty good.