Tightening The Jaws Of A Clamp
Put scrap wood between jaws and work to protect surfaces and distribute pressure evenly like your hanging garment bag. Avoid overtightening the jaws; hand-tighten until a thin line of glue oozes from the joint.
Put plastic (similar to the kind used for sandwich bags) under the joints and the work to catch glue seeps and to prevent inadvertently bonding the work to the bench or the scrap. Be sure the work doesn’t slide out of alignment during the clamping procedure. Clean excess glue from the surface with a damp rag, and allow to set.
C-clamps are available in a range of sizes. Jaw capacities vary from 1 to 8 in., throat depths from 1 to 4 in. Turning the handle adjusts jaw opening. Some C-clamps have ball joints on the jaws that swivel to grip irregular shapes.
Deep-throat clamp can be improvised using a sturdy C-clamp and wood scraps. Be sure the block of scrap is higher than the wood joint. Put a long scrap over block and joint and clamp down. The long scrap will transfer pressure to the joint.
Hand screw jaws canbe parallel or angled. To open or close jaws in parallel, grasp a handle in each hand. Imagine a pivot point between the two handles; crank the handles around that point. To change angle, hold one handle steady, turn the other handle like a screwdriver.
To clamp parallel but offset surfaces (for example, repairing a veneer bubble in a tabletop), adjust screws so that jaws are parallel but one jaw extends beyond the other. Clamp size is overall length of jaws. The most common sizes are 6, 8,10, 12, and 14 in.