Large F clamp

Over the years I’ve collected a modest stash of F-style clamps. Not mountains of them—I’ve never fully bought into that old saying, “you can never have too many clamps.” If your walls are covered in those things, maybe it’s time to reconsider your strategy! Besides, making your own clamps isn’t rocket science: a stick, some scrap wood, a few screws, and a couple of wedges will get you surprisingly far. And truth be told, sometimes you only need one clamp—like when you’re gluing up a spring joint.

Anyway, I rummaged through my stack of “I’m gonna get good use for that piece one day” and found the 2×8” piece left over from the work bench build. Did I find a use for it (five years later)? Ya bet!

I did not need the WHOLE piece, though, so I just cut out a piece. With something looking like a polar bear trapped in the wood on the right hand side…

This is for my 600mm (23 ⁵/₈”) clamps.

I tarted up the faces with my smoothing plane – look at the quilted look of the pine!

Some anger management techniques later, and I had created a rough mortise.

The therapy session concluded with the use of a router plane to finesse the bottom of the mortise. I swear, these things should be handed out to mellow troubled minds. It’s therapeutic to use one! Serenety now…

I proceeded to tart up the piece of oak, after I cut it to length: depth of mortise + (number of clamps times width of one clamp) + 10mm leeway. A piece of teak was rescued from the Bin of Rejects and Disappointment, and found a life as a stopper. A better faith than being a heat source for my bacon cheese sausage.

The verdict might be out on that one, though. Anyhoo… Here’s the parts ready:

After gluing the oak piece into the mortise, I drilled and countersunk for the screws to secure the piece of teak. I also pre-drilled the holes in the piece of oak, but not all the way. This was to avoid splitting and to make sure I got the piece mounted where I want it.

I screwed the piece of teak in place, indexed the screws (of course!) and gave the holder a coat of shellac. When the fumes cleared and I saw only ten fingers again, I gave the holder a light coat of beeswax, which I buffed out after it had hardened.

There are some images at the end of the article that shows the holder doing its thing.

Really big F-clamp rack

And now for my biggest F-style clamps; these are 120x800mm (about 5×31.5”). Same method, but this time I used up a nice piece of 2×6. Originally, I just cut a piece off for the “arm”, but later decided to keep the “F-profile” (or is it P-profile??) to give some support for the rather long bars on the biggest clamps.

I whacked out a mortise here, too.

To prevent the clamps from thinking they are indeed pendulums, I added a 20mm beech dowel (I have a bucket of them! 50cm, or nearly 20” long). I drilled a 20mm hole with an auger bit.

Here’s a good method: stop when the worm screw poke through the other side.

Flip the piece around, insert the worm screw into the hole and off you go.

This leaves a neat hole. If you just blast through, you’ll tear out the edge. Which I did here because I yanked the auger bit out of the hole in stead of reversing it out. Oh, well…

I tarted up the holder and mounted it on the wall. I’ll take it down again and apply some finish at a later point (which, if I’m to be honest, may never happen.. Y’all know very well about those permanent temporary things, right?). Indexed screws, of course.

There’s the dowel doing its job:

Some images

Here’s the smaller F-style clamp holder, partially loaded with clamps. I love the shine of the beeswax!

Room for one more clamp if I decide to buy one. These are good clamps, but they should probably get some cork to protect what ever I am clamping.

It is easy to retrieve a clamp; I can just lift them off the holder from the front.

And there they are – all of my bigger clamps! I need to fix or remake the sash clamp rack, though – it sags in the middle on the lower level.

This corner of my shop isn’t much use thanks to the oven on the wall. I keep a big roll of paper towels there on a floor-standing rack, and if I need to stand in the spot while working at the bench to the left, I can just move things aside. At the moment that bench is buried under parts for a project I’m in the middle of.

And that concludes my list of tool holders for now. There are more to come in the future.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, my shop entropy level goes down. Momentarily, sure – but still!