Pipe clamps are well known to most woodworkers and are most commonly used to clamp pieces of wood to glue up larger panels. These clamp sets come with both a sliding tail stop as well as a stationary clamp head with acme threads and a handle to apply clamping pressure. You supply either ½” or ¾” black iron pipe, depending on what size fixture you’ve purchased.
Some of the most popular brands are Bessey®, Rockler®, and the Jorgensen® Pony® clamp line. They are readily available and the economics are good too!
But, they don’t need to be utilized only in the woodshop. In this episode, DirtFarmer Jay and his friend Bill show you how to make use of one of these clamps when doing building framing. When lumber is twisted or needs to be held in place until it can be securely fastened, a pipe clamp can come in really handy.
By tightening the clamp onto a piece of framing lumber, you can essentially create a wrench to allow you to torque or twist the lumber into place until it can be nailed or screwed in.
A couple of words of caution are in order. First, you will need to tighten the clamp head down very well to get an adequate grip on the wood. Even then, don’t put yourself or a helper in danger by being in line of where the clamp could slip off suddenly with significant force. Second, the longer the pipe, the greater the leverage you will have, and this works both for AND against you. Don’t overstress the pipe or the lumber. If you do, you can bend the pipe. ¾” pipe is stronger than ½”, but you can still bend it, so be careful. And, the more torque you apply, the more the clamp will tend to slip off. So - be careful!
If you do a lot of framing and need to grip lumber like this routinely, there are tools made specifically for this application.
Sure, you can hire a carpenter to do all of your framing projects, but don’t you just love it when you can JUST DO IT YOURSELF?
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. I've got a quick tip for you today
that when you're out framing and some of the timbers or the framing elements just aren't
cooperating and you need an extra hand to get some leverage, I've got a quick tip that'll help
you a lot. Stay tuned. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. As you can see,
we are framing the new addition to our shop here and we're doing a quick video. Sorry,
we're not doing the normal sound system and all that, so I know it sounds a little boomy,
but we wanted to make sure and get this to you. Now, if you look up here, we're putting these
heavy posts, but you can see that there's a gap right here and we've put in a four-by element
up here, but to roll that shut takes more force than I can do and to hold on to it,
so you need a little helper. My friend Bill here has a pipe clamp, but what we're going to do is
we're going to use the pipe clamp as a big old wrench. So I'm just simply going to put this on
the timber here, come around here and screw it on and this will give Bill the leverage he needs
to roll this down. Now, you're going to need to tighten it pretty well and a little bit of a
warning here. You're going to have that this is going to want to slip this way, so you want to
make sure it's really tight and make sure no one's standing in this area because it can be dangerous.
So what you're going to do, Bill's going to pull straight back in that direction and when he does,
what will happen over here is that'll roll shut. So Bill, go ahead and put some pressure on it.
There it goes. See, it's shut now. Now I can go ahead and nail this in. Bill, go and let it go
here slowly and you can see how much deflection. Well, to get all this straight, you need to do it
this way. I'm going to go ahead and pull this back over, then I'm going to go ahead and nail it home.
Here we go. All right, I've got enough in it to hold it. Bill, go and let that go slowly and let's
what we've got. Look at that. Beautiful. Everything's tight right here and we're ready to go.
If you have a quick tip like this you'd like to share with your fellow viewers,
feel free to do so in the comments below. We'll get it out. Meanwhile, if you found the video to
be helpful, please like it and better yet, subscribe to our channel and you'll get notified
every Friday if you ring the bell about a new video, a new tip that comes out. Until the next
time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com with my friend Bill.
