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Beginners Woodwork Page 3 - Clamps & Vices/Vises
Clamps come in all shapes and sizes and many are built for a purpose, and also there are many different types of vices. They are designed to hold the work steady so that we can safely work on a project and also are very helpful when we need two pieces of wood held together firmly after glue has been applied to the surfaces, the glue might take 2 hours to dry and the clamps or vice can do that for us.
My children and I reupholstered some chairs and we used Pipe Clamps to hold the chair in place while we bolted the chair back together after we put on the new upholstery.
I have probably used a vice for holding work that I am working on a thousand or more times.
A vice is a very useful work tool that is used in crafts, woodwork, and working with metal.
For small work you could use the Helping Hands.
Basically what you do is consider what you need clamped and then go find a clamp in your workshop that will do the job. Clearly the workshop needs a lot of different types of clamps, and many of them to do a certain task.
Image 2 shows a musical note in a vice to be lightly sanded. Can you see what is wrong with this setup?
This is a steel vice and the “faces” that touch the wood are steel, they have a tread on them to grip what is in the vice. But the downside of this is that the material gets marked when the tension is applied to hold the item in the vice.
In Image 3 we see that I have added two pieces of scrap wood on either side of the work being sanded.
The scrap wood gets marked and not the good work that you are working on.
There are many small useful vices on the market to help you work on projects. At point “A” we have the clamp that is used to secure the vice to a workbench, table, or even a piece of wood. I have bolted one of my vices onto a piece of wood and then use a big clamp to clamp it to the work bench –
Many vices have an “Anvil” area (see point B) where you can use it to straighten nails, or to shape something on.
At point “C” you can see a lever. If this lever is turned it will lock or loosen the Swivel Base of the vice.
This handy feature allows you to turn around the vice while working on the material in the vice without having to take the work out and turn it around. If you look on the packaging it shows “360º” and that means that the base of the anvil turns a full circle.
Images 6 & Image 7 show the vice I have that is bolted to a board and then a clamp is used to hold the board that the vice is on to a table.
This allows me to take this vice wherever I need it. I could put it in a car and go to a friends place if we need the vice there to do some work at his place. This is a very handy mobile set up.
This is a bigger vice that also has a swivel setup so that it can be turned around in increments should it to do so.
Image 8 is a small clamp that I took a photo of to show you the workings of the average clamp.
The Clamping Faces are there so that whatever is being clamped does not get marked, but sometimes these rubber/plastic protectors come off. To combat this, when I buy the clamps, I take the rubber/plastic protectors off and add some glue to them and then put them back on. This small effort secures them in place while you use them.
I got a set of these miniature clamps and have found many uses for them. Like all clamps they have their place and work wonders when I need them to hold something in place or for holding surfaces together when glue is being set.
We can see my carpenters vice in Image 9 and Image 10.
At point “A” we have the winder to close the vice on the work piece.
And at point “B” the clamp to clamp the vice to a bench.
This is a vice that I have had for many years. I don’t remember when I bought it or where I bought it from.
Where the “Jaws” are, you can on these types of vices screw wood to the vice faces to protect the wood that you are working on. This is a good idea because you don’t have to worry about marking your work and you can change the wood once it is of no further use to you.
You can use thinner wood if your work does not fit in the vice.
A good vice can last you many years.
This is another item that it is worth paying good money for because if you get a good one it will serve you well and be a very faithful and useful tool in the workshop.
You can walk around a hardware store and when you get to the clamps and vice’s have a good look at them and try to imagine what they are used for. Read the description of the vice or clamp on the packaging to help give you ideas.
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