20 secret clamping tricks from woodworkers

Here’s a great way to hold boards for routing and planing with ne’er a worry that they’ll slide around or flop over as you work. Clamp two handscrews to a sawhorse or tabletop so their jaws are lined up. Slide the workpiece into the jaws and tighten the handscrews.

Medium-size handscrews have 15mm of usable jaw surface above the screws, so they grip the board like two long-jawed vices. This tip is especially useful when routing moulding profiles on narrow boards. You can also screw the handscrews to a piece of 20mm plywood on your shop floor and use them to hold doors for edge-planing.

Slender, curvy workpieces tend to slip and slide in regular woodworking vices, so try Richard Chowin’s great alternative. Clamp a bar or pipe clamp in your bench vice, then tighten the clamp to grip the workpiece at each end. Your future masterpiece won’t move a smidgen while you work, and you’ll have access to all the curves and recesses along its length. This vice also works great for holding more delicate projects for sanding or finishing.

Here are some genius sanding tips you need to know.

Moaning again that your pipe clamps aren’t long enough to assemble your new “monsterpiece?” Pipe down and quit whining! A few extra 60- and 120-cm pipe segments plus a handful of pipe couplings are all you need for the extra-long or extra-wide job. Screw couplings and extra pipes to those too short pipes to create the needed lengths. If the pipe clamps are under the wood, add spacers slightly higher than the couplings perpendicular to the pipes. When you’re finished, unscrew and store the extra pipes with couplings and you’ll be ready for the next jumbo project that comes down the pipeline.

Are your C-clamp jaws leaving dents in projects or the furniture you’re repairing? Press adhesive-backed felt pads for table and chair legs on the jaw faces (you’ll get a better bond if you lightly sand the faces with fine sandpaper). Look for larger precut rectangular shapes that you can trim to fit your woodworking bar clamps faces as well.

Serve up your spring clamps on a tray – a slotted piece of 20mm plywood with 6mm plywood fins glued in the slots. A clamp tray defies the natural tendency of tools to create clutter. Just pull the tray off a peg, takes a few clamps off the fins, stick them back on the fins when you’re done, and hang up the tray.

Enjoy these 19 practical woodworking projects for beginners.

One woodworker sent in this gem of a tip. He built some clever plywood clamp extenders to use when his bar clamps are too short to do the job. It sure beats the old trick of joining two bar clamps in the middle.

This handy under-mount rack keeps your pipe clamps right where you need them. Simply cut a series of 30mm diameter holes along the centre line of a 2×6 and then rip the 2×6 in half to create the half-circle slots. Next, screw 1×4 sides and top to the cradle and screw it to the bottom of your workbench.

These are the 10 most common woodworking mistakes beginners make.

Clamping mitred edges can be a real hassle because they never seem to line up correctly. The easiest way that I’ve found to get around this process is to use painter’s tape as clamps. First set the pieces so that the outer edges are facing up and tape them edge-to-edge. The flip the pieces over so the bevelled edges are facing up and glue them together. Complete the process by taping the last two edges together and let sit until completed. The tape removes easily and the glue won’t attach to the tape, making sanding and finishing very simple.

Corner clamping blocks for assembling picture frames aren’t a new idea: woodworking magazines have shown variations for years. But these are among the best. The holes span the corner, keeping the clamps from sticking to the frames when the glue squeezes out.

We show you how to make a picture frame.

When driving screws by hand, use a piece of rubber shelf liner to cushion your hand and increase torque on the screwdriver handle.

Slide bicycle handlebar grips on bar clamp handles.

Cut the fingers off old rubber dishwashing gloves and stretch them over handles of handscrews.

Plus: Everything you need to know about clamping.