New Leigh hold-down clamps: Workholding made easy

Al Navas

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Between St Joseph and Savannah, MO
From my blog:

Christopher Schwarz made a terrific presentation at the Berea Hand Tool Conference in November: Forgotten Workbenches and Workholding.

During his presentation Chris covered workholding. As a result of this presentation, I started doing some serious thinking about my European style workbench, and how I could improve clamping of work pieces when hand cutting dovetails, clamping jigs in place, etc.

The existing setup was slow and cumbersome:

leigh-clamps-5.png


One option was to use holdfasts; but this meant drilling holes through the 3-1/2-inch thick bench top. And during The Schwarz's presentation, a little light went on in my brain. I remembered Leigh Industries had announced a new product not long before the conference in Berea: Their hold-down clamps, available in two models.

You can read a terrific review of these clamps by Dean Bielanowski, at OnlineToolReviews.com. I am not writing this to do another review; but rather, to share some uses I quickly found for these new clamps since I received them, 20 hours ago. In my opinion, these clamps solve many workholding problems at the workbench; they are terrific! Well, I did manage to include a quick review.

The two versions of the hold-down clamps:

Bench mount:
This version allows use of existing bench dog holes and, therefore, would allow use close to the front edge of the bench. The bench mount is a quick, easy way to hold down even small work pieces:

leigh-clamps-2.png


A huge plus: The bench mount version is also used on the drill press! I have not tried it, but will dedicate one as soon as another clamp arrives.

Surface mount: The surface hold-down clamp provides another way of cutting dovetails at the bench:

leigh-clamps-1.png


Sometimes, clamping jigs can be cumbersome; it depends on the style of the workbench. My European-style bench, with the bank of cabinets below the stretcher under the top slab, created a challenge to use clamps. But holding down the FMT is no longer a challenge:

1. On the left side, the bench clamp:

leigh-clamps-3.png


2. And on the right, the surface mount clamp:

leigh-clamps-4.png


3. The FMT with both sides clamped - easy:

leigh-clamps-6.png


I now envision installing several anchors, to hold surface mount clamps along the front face of the bench. Think crochet (pronounced crow-shay) the easy way; but now you can have one crochet on the left, and one on the right-hand side. Great for edge-jointing, and a terrific way to hold a board on edge on the front face of the bench, in addition to using the face vise. I invite you to read several references to the crochet and its use in workbenches at the Woodworking Magazine blog.

I will not sell my D4: I have been asked several times if I want to sell my Leigh D4 dovetail jig, since I am improving my skill at hand-cutting dovetails. My reply is still that I cannot, and will not sell the D4; it is my workhorse when I make multiple drawers and large dovetails carcases. I am reserving hand-cutting dovetails for very small drawers, impossible to cut with the D4.


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Thanks for making me aware of these clamps and for a good demonstration of thier use.

I will probably purchase a couple of these eventually. Right now I have one Veritas surface mount clamp (http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=57059&cat=1,43838) which serves some of the same function. I really like the L:ee Valley clamp and was planning to get some more. But the Lee Valley clamp is quite a bit more expensive than the Leigh clamp ($72 US rather than $50 US).
 
Thanks for making me aware of these clamps and for a good demonstration of thier use.
You are welcome, Frank.



... I will probably purchase a couple of these eventually. Right now I have one Veritas surface mount clamp (http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=57059&cat=1,43838) which serves some of the same function. I really like the Lee Valley clamp and was planning to get some more. But the Lee Valley clamp is quite a bit more expensive than the Leigh clamp ($72 US rather than $50 US).
In your experience, will the Veritas clamp exert sufficient pressure to keep a board from moving? I just don't have a feel for how well the screw mechanism allows you to tighten down.


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Al, the Veritas surface clamp will imobilize whatever you put under it. Just like their hold down, you can really tighten down on it. I have never had an issue with boards moving from under the clamp.
Don
 
Wow:

Those are nice! I also like the Veritas clamping mechanism Frank pointed out.

My budget would be stressed by several $50 or $75 purchases of that nature.

I was toying with the idea of using something like the link below:

http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=5235

For $20 (with the optional large pad) I'd be tempted to buy one. Worst comes to worst I use it as intended (heaven forbid) on the drill press.

Next time I'm at Woodcraft I'll have to check it out. I'm assuming it can generate so down pressure as that what it's supposed to do on the DP. I don't know how easy it would be to "jigger" with if the "bolt" end wasn't fixed.

Something to think about.

Jim
 
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