July 13, 20179 yr I have between 300 & 400 clamps of all descriptions. I'm currently working on a shelving unit with six shelves. Because the span if 48", I added some front and back stiffeners to the shelf*. I discovered that I can only do two and a half shelves at a time because I ran our of 4 to 12" F-clamps. So I had to do an assembly line and pull from a shelf that had been sitting for 30 minutes to the one being worked up.(Yesterday). Today I'm fastening the shelves to the sides. One of the front clamps on each shelf, one on the back along one side only so I didn't get glue that I could not re-position.. Had just enough clamps that would clamp 48 3/4", but 8 of the 12 would not go another inch. So back to the pipe clamps, found six couplers and grabbed some clamps where I could remove the heads and connect two pipes together to make one longer clamp. Got six more this way, only two short, but I'll make do. You can have a lot of clamps, but you might not always have enough of the sizes you need at once. * Beam strength if proportional to the cube of the height. Doubling the width will double the load bearing capacity. Doubling the depth will increase it by a factor of eight. Edited December 5, 20178 yr by Ron Dudelston tags added
July 13, 20179 yr Keith, People step in my shop and say, " Wow, look at all those clamps". They obviously haven't seen your collection. No matter how many you have, it always seems like you need one more.
July 13, 20179 yr 18 minutes ago, lew said: I'd have to build a shop addition if I had that many! That makes two of us! John
July 13, 20179 yr Author 40 years of collecting, and last year I ran into a guy who had 24 hours to get out his house that he'd just sold, was moving to an apartment, then back to Canada in the next couple of years. He was selling everything in his shop for $2000. I got about 100 clamps for $100. If I wasn't also in the process of moving, I would have bought it all and resold what I didn't need. Speaking of clamps, I got some from him that were name brand but clearly lower quality. Some Ponys and some other brands. You can pick them up and just realize they're not as good as the others. So if you're buying, beware. I almost bought some of these cheapies at a big box recently until I realized they were lightweight.
July 14, 20179 yr Yep, I got some of those light duty Pony's at HD. Still work OK for small projects, but the threaded shaft might bend if I tried to tighten too much.
July 14, 20179 yr Author I have a few Harbor Freight F-clamps. I think they're one of their gems. I had a handle that loosened up on the threaded rod. Took it back, "Yeah, go get a new one in aisle 7 and bring it up here and we'll exchange it." I notice even Michael Fortune uses them (FWW photos).
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