Although I like to make my own homemade clamps and vises, little by little I bought a few very cheap carpentry clamps, the kind that are so cheap you wonder if they are worth it. I believe that quality clamps are always worth having if you can afford them, but these cheap clamps work for me. However, they have the drawback of leaving a large mark on the wood of the pieces I’m working with if I don’t protect them with wooden blocks.
The old model had a solid flat piece on the top of the movable jaw, hooked onto a ball that was the end of the screw. It didn’t mark the wood as much, and it wasn’t as necessary to adjust wooden blocks between the jaws of the clamp and the pieces to be glued.
And on the newer models, sometimes the top part comes loose, leaving the screw without a surface to press against the wood. But this usually happens only in a few cases. The biggest problem is that instead of a smooth surface to press against the wood, the head of the tightening screw has a horrible plate.
And it is this horrible plate that is the main culprit for these carpentry clamps now leaving that horrible mark on the wood. So, a simple solution like this one we are going to see will make work in our home workshop more comfortable.
I have another video on how to improve these cheap clamps for woodworking:
All you need is a piece of 1-centimeter thick plywood from which you can cut pieces 10cm long by 3cm wide. You need two of these plywood pieces for each clamp. I made 20, for 10 carpenter’s clamps. Now, on the drill press, we are going to make three 5mm holes in each piece so that we see the metal guide of the clamps can pass between the two holes at the ends. With a narrow chisel, we cut the remnants between the holes, and again on the drill press, we clean the hole by moving the piece to the sides with the bit spinning inside. This way, we finish making a groove in the plywood pieces to fit the metal bar of the cheap clamps.
We sand the sides of the plywood piece a bit (a simple drill disc sander makes the job easier), and they’re ready.
It’s also necessary to disassemble the fixed jaw of the carpenter’s clamps, and for that, you need to remove the notch or rivet, as the case may be, at the bottom of the metal guide of these clamps. It’s a fairly simple task to do with the grinder; you just have to be careful not to have wood scraps or other flammable materials nearby, as they could catch fire from the sparks generated.
Don’t miss how to make a -> simple wooden stand for these carpenter’s clamps.
Another advantage of this simple trick is that it makes it easier to apply pressure in the direction we want, parallel to the metal guide. These cheap clamps sometimes have the screw thread tilted to one side. These plywood plates allow a bit of play with the clearances and better adjust the direction of the pressure exerted by these carpenter’s clamps.