Holding/Clamping aids
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 9:20 pm
I took some brackets I had built to mount castors on my router table cabinet off it so I could mount larger ones on and realized that they would make good holding/clamping aids. They work on the inside of a corner and have proven to be very handy when I needed to hold pieces together like the center partitions or end panels on a vanity/cupboard when I needed to position and hold them while I drilled holes or drove brads in, etc. They also work pretty well as a gluing jig. One photo shows how I used one to clamp one panel at 90* to another.
After using them for a bit I thought it would also be handy to have some for outside the corners as sometimes you can't clamp across the inside so I slapped some pieces together for a "proof of concept". The prototype is pretty ugly and needs refinement but the idea works well. It is just two pieces of ply or wood with a 90* rib glued to each of them and the ribs extend past the ends enough to make an overlap joint. The overlap is where the jig is primarily held together so it needs to have enough overlap area to be strong enough for the job. The ribs could taper down in width as they go out to the ends and that would look better.These cost nothing to make since you can use up some of your shop scraps in making them. The second photo shows how I used the outside corner jig to hold two pieces of osb together as part of a 3 sided channel I was making. I don't think I would bother beveling the edges of the joint on the jig for the next one and the next one will have the ribs offset so that when I overlap them the edges of the jig will be level.
After using them for a bit I thought it would also be handy to have some for outside the corners as sometimes you can't clamp across the inside so I slapped some pieces together for a "proof of concept". The prototype is pretty ugly and needs refinement but the idea works well. It is just two pieces of ply or wood with a 90* rib glued to each of them and the ribs extend past the ends enough to make an overlap joint. The overlap is where the jig is primarily held together so it needs to have enough overlap area to be strong enough for the job. The ribs could taper down in width as they go out to the ends and that would look better.These cost nothing to make since you can use up some of your shop scraps in making them. The second photo shows how I used the outside corner jig to hold two pieces of osb together as part of a 3 sided channel I was making. I don't think I would bother beveling the edges of the joint on the jig for the next one and the next one will have the ribs offset so that when I overlap them the edges of the jig will be level.