Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Woodworking Clamps
Beginner’s Guide to Woodworking Clamps
These are the woodworking clamps you'll actually use in your shop. But there's some of these I wish I had never bought and some of these I wish I had have bought sooner. This is a beginner's guide to woodworking clamps
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#1 Squeeze Clamps
Over the years I've went through a bunch of different styles of clamps and which ones worked for me and which ones didn't. I first started the first clamps I ever bought were these black and red clamps.
These are from Walmart and I bought them for about $3 a piece. I still have like four of them left but the majority of them broke because they were so cheaply made and you just couldn't put any pressure to speak of to hold things together. Now I think these quick clamps or squeeze clamps are some of the first you should buy as a beginner woodworker. Because for one they're very inexpensive and for two they work well for holding things together while you just attach it or you know put a screw through it or just holding things in place till the glue dries. That's why I like them. I highly recommend the Irwin brand. These have held up very well and you can get these a really nice price. Or if if you have a little bit bigger budget the Bessey brand is an extremely good squeeze clamp. These are two of my favorite brands of squeeze clamps and I think these for beginners are a good budget option. But
if you value your money and what they're getting for your price I would steer clear of these cheaper squeeze clamps they just don't last and I regret buying them. I would have been much better off just paying a few extra dollars for the better ones and then not having these constantly break.
#2 F-Clamps
There's a couple of extra squeeze clamps that I'll recommend in but not yet you shouldn't buy those in the beginning. I think the next clamp you should buy is absolutely the F-clamp.
This is one of, if not the most used, clamp in my shop. I've used these thousands of times for various different reasons. I literally used to make glue ups with these so like panels, table legs, things like that. On these, you just have to put a sacrificial piece in there so that the smaller pieces doesn't make an indention in the wood or if it does make the indention it does it in the scrap piece.
There's one brand of F-clamps that I don't recommend and don't hate on me because I'll recommend them later as a brand. This is a Harbor Freight F-clamp and the reason I don't like them is when you put pressure on them the metal on the bar is so thin, it’s not good tensile strength and it just bends. It causes a little bit of an issue with things. It's just not the greatest.
I know you can get a bunch of those for very cheap but if you look at something like the Irwin brand again they're very well made, nice thick bar, and they don't bend as easy. And by far, my favorite F-clamp that I've purchased, and I've purchased several of these now is the Jorgensen brand F-clamp. These are some of the best F-clamps made in my opinion even above the Bessie brand.
I think the Jorgensen brand is just a more robust clamp. Big thick handle on there. Nice thick bar. If you like thick Jorgensen's the way to go.
#3 Pipe Clamps
After you have the squeeze clamps and the F-clamps, the next clamp you should buy as a beginner in my opinion, is the bar clamp.
Why? Because these are inexpensive for what you're getting and you can do multiple glue-ups with them. You can do cutting boards. You can do tabletops. A lot of things to keep that nice flat glue up that you're looking for.
A bar clamp is perfect for that. And a lot of people use bar clamps over parallel clamps because of that reason. Now parallel clamps have their place. We'll talk about it. But these are a fantastic way to add a bunch of clamps to your shop for a little bit of money. I have several of these. This is Bessey brand. This the only ones I have as far as bar clamps go and I recommend them. They've worked extremely well. Basically the bottom jaw slides the top jaw screws into the top and you can get the pipes the clamps everything you need on Amazon. These are really good clamps and they go on sale quite regularly. This is a good way to stock up on clamps for your shop.
#4 Long Bar Clamps
All right the next few clamps I think you should need before you buy parallel clamps. Because parallel clamps are so expensive I don't think a beginner needs them right off the bat. You can use other styles to get away with that. One clamp I have been very impressed with I've used these a bunch and they they're very long. This is like a 60” clamp from Harbor Freight. So I told you I was going to recommend them. These are really good clamps. Now they're not the strongest clamps because this channel is hollow but a lot of people just cut a wood strip stick in there it makes them much more robust.
And now you can use those for a variety of reasons. The reason I like these is because it's very expensive to get very long clamps like this and so I've got these for the shop and I've used them on a ton of projects. I actually used to use those to glue up my flags when I was making those. To build this workbench I used those because I had to hook two together. So if you need a lot of clamping area these from Harbor Freight are fantastic clamps. And I think it's really good to have longer clamps than the shop because there's a lot of times when you're gluing up different projects that are wider or longer you're going to need those bigger clamps.
#5 Corner Squares
Parallel clamps? No not yet. Next I think these are not really clamps but more clamp accessories and I think every shop should have these if you value your time and your sanity. These are corner clamps or clamping squares or whatever you want to call them.
And these work with just any regular either squeeze clamp or F-clamps. I use these a lot with F-clamps. When you're putting any two pieces together on a 90° angle like cabinets these are lifesavers. You'll hug my neck next time you see me if you buy these because of this video. I can't believe went so long without these. I used to try to hold them up and then they would just fall and it would just be frustrating. When you put these together you clamp one side down clamp the other side down. Now you've got a perfect 90° angle that you can attach your two pieces together whether that be pocket screws or if you're using other types of joinery. These are so inexpensive and so handy to have in the shop. I've got a whole set here. That's got like an extra small, small, medium and large and I think these are just a fantastic value for your shop.
#6 Squeeze Clamps aka Spring Clamps
Now for those squeeze clamps I think you should buy at this point in time. Then look at these two. It just depends on the type of work you're doing. These little blue ones are handy as a shirt pocket. Stick them in there pull it out when you need it. You'll love these little things. I use these all the time to hold things down while I get a measurement or just hold things in place until I get a bigger clamp on there.
These are fantastic and they have this jaw on the inside so you can clamp round stock and all kinds of stuff. These are just really great to have. Now there's another version here that has a band attached to them. I love having these if you put on like face trim or anything like that this helps just hold that nice and tight to the glue dries. If you don't want any nails showing or you just put those on there while you put some pin nails in. These I'm telling you if you do any type of face trim or anything like that you'll love having these in the shop.
#7 Face/Pocket Hole Clamp
Parallel clamps? Not yet? If you do pocket holes now if you don't do pocket holes what's wrong with you? Everybody loves pocket holes. If you do pocket holes these two clamps are again you're going to hug my neck. If you've never had a face clamp or a 90° pocket hole clamp these two are absolutely phenomenal. Especially the face clamp. Before I got the face clamp I used to try to use F-clamps to hold two pieces flush together. It was a pain in the rear. Once you have these they have a pivoting head pivot. They have a pivoting head there that will basically level up two pieces so that they're perfectly flush while you drive the pocket screw.
You'll love having one of these and they're not that expensive at all. Just one pair is all you need.
You don't need more than that. I've had the same pair for years and they've lasted for a very long time. I highly recommend that Kreg brand. Now this one, it's a little more expensive, but if you put two panels together at an angle at a 90° angle using those corner clamps then you're going to love having this because it's going to keep your two panels from shifting on you while you drive that pocket screw in there.
Because it has this nice long 3/8 inch little basic metal dowel that goes into the pocket hole the other side clamps on the opposite side keeps everything nice and flush. I can't say enough about this clamp. I've had this one for years as well. It's one of the best clamps I've bought. I love this thing and this thing is so nice to have when you need it.
#8 Dovetail Clamps
Parallel clamp? No no no no. Not yet. This and besides there's some of these you don't want to buy and some you do we'll talk about that. This is a dovetail clamp. Now why would you need a dove tail clamp? I think this is probably one of the most versatile underrated clamps out there.
I've use these on a ton of different things. I love having these on my jointing jig. If you've seen that video where you can joint the edge of boards or taper boards using these clamps on that jig fantastic. And all you need is a dovetail bit and these clamps. They sell them as a pack and then there you go. You're off to the races.
I also use this on my cross cut sled. This is really great for holding small parts while you're cutting or holding things at an angle. Like these are just so nice to have. Also, I made a mini-workbench that incorporated these so you could do all sorts of like traditional woodworking stuff with a small workbench if you're in a small shop. I'll link to that right there on that card. You can go watch that video. How to build that if you're in a small space. It's perfect. It's awesome. But these little dovetail clamps are just they're really nice I love having these in shop.
#9 Hand Screw Clamps
I used to think these were old timer clamps in other words only old people used them. Because I saw them in all the old magazines and stuff. And then I got some in the shop. And I think these before parallel clamps are more important. They're called hand screw clamps and one of the main uses for them is because these two screws are independent you can do different angles. So if you needed to clamp something at an angle you could. Another thing is you can use them for temporary stop blocks on your fence like your router table.
You could also hold small parts with it at the drill press. Or you can use them as temporary setup for a vertical vice on your actual workbench. So these are awesome to have and they're very inexpensive. You can buy these for not a lot of money.
#10 Parallel Clamps
Parallel clamps yes, but we need to talk about clamp storage and we'll do that after the parallel clamps. Now I did a whole video on the best parallel clamp that you could buy and I bought all like different brands. I don't remember how many brands but there was a bunch of them.
And what I thought was the best of the best were the Besseys because of the price. But the Harbor Freight Bremen brand is wildly underrated.
This is like $35 for a 24” parallel clamp. It’s a super good price. If you're on a budget and you don't mind Harbor Freight stuff, this is a good deal in my opinion. Some people kind of frown on these as not being very good, but I've had very good luck out of this one no issues at all. The Besseys are my favorite. The REVO K Body I believe it is. These are my favorite and because of their just best bang for the buck clamp you can buy. You can get them in different bundles where you get 2 24” or 2 31”, or 2 50”. I've got several of these that they're just absolutely amazing clamps. I like the JET clamps. I think they're very nice but they're also very expensive and I don't really recommend those for most people. So why do wood workers use parallel clamps? Well the as the name suggests, these jaws once tightened down are parallel to each other. And where that's very useful cutting boards, tabletops, and any panel glue up that you're doing. If those two jaws can remain parallel it's going to keep your panel from bowing and twisting and things like that. So a lot of people love these for panel glue ups. In other words putting more than two pieces of wood together edge to edge. So these are really handy to have for that purpose. So if you're doing a lot of that work you'll appreciate parallel clamps and if you're not then you really don't need them. While they are useful for doing things like cabinets and things because you can hold again parallel, I've used them for that. You could seriously get away with only using these bar type clamps or other types versus parallel clamps and save a lot of money.
Before we get to clamp storage what size do you need? Well it just depends on what you're making right. So if you're making a lot of cutting boards then a 24”, probably a 36” clamp like this 36” bar clamp will be perfectly fine. When you start making tabletops things like that you're going to want to get bigger clamps, longer clamps, but there's a lot of different versions. This is a 24” parallel clamp. They have 31”. They have 50”. So it just depends on what you're making. On the F-clamps, a lot of times I prefer the 36” but it's always nice to have some smaller versions as well. I have this small set of Besseys you see here on this rack. I use these all the time to hold small parts. Having a good variety is nice, but if you only have the budget starting out for one size 36” seems to be kind of the best middle ground.
Clamp Storage Ideas
And when you first start out you're only going to have a few clamps and you're not really going to have to worry about storage. But I like them. I love them. I want some more of them. That's kind of how we think about clamps as woodworkers. So you have to figure out a way to store these. Now you can do it a bunch of different ways. There's literally hundreds of ways to store them. And I've come up with a few that worked well in my shop.
First and foremost I just made some out of plywood. Now these for these small F-clamps like you see here you're just going to cut slots in them that'll fit right through there. It works perfectly fine. You can literally do that for any of the clamps. And then I also have these from Rockler that are just made for specific style clamps.
So these are made for the parallel clamps. There's a set made for the pipe clamps and there's a set made for the f-style clamps. I like these because “A” they're not very expensive. I didn't have to make them. I'm lazy they're cheap easy and you just screw them into a solid wall and then you can just store your clamps. Time saver basically.
Then also my mobile tool cart I was able just to incorporate some clamp racks in that just so that I would have clamps handy on the tool cart. So you can see there's a variety of ways to store clamps in your shop depending on how you use them. I even have some stored under this toolbox.
If you're a beginner woodworker and you have suggestions or questions about certain tools how to use them what they're used for let me know in the comments and I'll look at making more posts like this. In the mean time, check out the related articles below.
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