I want to show you how to make a cam clamp like this by hand these clamps are
universally used by instrument makers and box makers and they're very
lightweight and they work really well on those kind of projects the projects that
have thin walls that need delicate pressure and you can't apply a lot of
pressure on the on the project that you're building for instance here's an
example here I've just made a box like this I want to glue the bottom on and I
need to put some light pressure around the rim here you pull this apart these
are infinitely adjustable pull this squeeze together here and then apply
pressure here and it doesn't move very much but boy it does apply a good
pressure so here again you can see how they work they give you the right
pressure they're very lightweight they don't apply a massive pressure but they
apply exactly the right pressure so I think you'll enjoy making these
they don't take very long to make you don't need a lot of skill to make them
and I'm going to walk you through the process now so let's get started first
of all we need some materials so we're going to I'll give you the sizes for
these particular ones now you can make these longer this way and you can make
your bar as long as you want you can do whichever you want these are going to be
clumps that will receive eight inches in between here so I've got actually 8 and
1/8 so I've made my bar is 11 and a half inches long and that gives me a bar that
will be adequate for the kind of project I just showed you I'm going to show you
how to make the first one and then you can make as many as you want
you need two of these blocks are the same size and these are 6 inches long
one and a half inches wide and I have mine 1 inch thick the bars are 1/8 of an
inch by three-quarter inch stock and as I said they're 11 and a half inches long
for an eight inch clamp if you want a ten inch clamp then they're going to be
proportionally larger so let's take a look here I just bought some steel bar
stock here like this from any probably a hardware shop a lot of hardware stores
will have this B and Q would have it Home Depot will probably have it those
will be you'll be paying a premium price for it there but I can get about I think
a clamp will cost me about 1 pound to make so roughly that's the case so we're
going to cut a bar to length first of all just for those of you who have zero
metalworking skills this is my overall length here I'm going to use a pencil or
a nail you can use either in this case I'm using a nail to mark my stock secure
it in the vise nice and solid
watch the clothes out here watch your knuckles you don't want breakage here
safety is important you can open this up here just to allow the blade through
that's the stock piece you need for your Steel get rid of that and I'm just going
to file the burrs off again it's safety drop it in the vise 10 to 12 inch flat
single cut file will work for this file whew that's so bad
a little lower see if we can get that away there you go so hard on our sound
man drop it in a little nearer to the surface here little better filing is a
skill definitely clean up the ends I'm going to remove the corners these have
burrs and these burrs are sharp take the corner off flip over take the corner off
this is just getting your stock ready for you to handle
flip it here take the corner off the RS again
well now we're ready start woodworking and now you know what you're doing with
your steel stock let's just discuss a little bit about the wood we got rid
of the messy metal working pretty much we have a little bit of drilling and
stuff to do so this is going to be mortised in to here as you can see on
the end of here it's going to be mortised it's going to have two roll pins in here
this has two roll pins here on either side this adjusts here it's got a screw
cinch down there this stops this from splitting and we've got a little bit of
shaping to do it's very simple this is a saw kerf for board hole a few little
things like that had to work on this is the exact size it's three quarters of an
inch dead on the steel sighs probably will be
exact but work to the steel not to a measurement I may say three quarters of
an inch but you have to work to the size of the steel stock you've got so we're
going to make a hole through here and we're going to do some layout on these
these need to be together we've got some measurements here so I'm going to
measure from the end of this part here from here to here is three and seven
eights I'm sure three seven eights could be
four inches if you wanted it to be so I'm going to make a line across here and
use my square across the two like this this is not in any way rocket science
this is not it doesn't need to be as exact but you have to have something
you're working to square these lines up onto this face and up onto this face
this will show you the start and stop lines that you're going to be working to
like this now 3/8 of an inch up here but we're going to set a gauge actually this
is 3/8 of an inch here this doesn't show too well I'm sure for you to follow
that's because it's a darker wood this is sapele which is very good for
this because it doesn't split easily and it resists split in actual fact so
pretty well sometimes it splits this is this part here let's see can you see how
this now corresponds to this part here so right on this inside corner here I
want a four millimeter hole to go all the way through there on this on the
moving piece only on the slide piece only let's put this one aside for now
this will do my second piece on the other so I'm going to replace this
because this doesn't have this split down here should have noticed that I'm
going to put the hole through here first
what I'm going to do is I'm going to drill through from one side first so can
you see here there is my line I'm going to go on this side of this line and on
this side of the line so I'm going on the internal corner here
what this is it's a stop hole it's basically to stop the whole from
splitting beyond that and going into here it gives a little bit of a break
point there and I'm going to do the same on this side so I'm on this side of the
line here and this side of the line here
but once you've drilled through from both sides that drilling from both sides
enables you to compensate if you were slightly out to square one way or the
other the drill will pull itself to the weakest or path of least
resistance so it will align the hole inside and that's what I've got now so
what I want to do next is I want to come about quarter of an inch deep here I've
got to put a scallop in here just like this and this scallop goes on both the
fixed head and the slide so I want to go in here quarter of an inch down here and
I want to leave one eighth of meat on there and the same on this one this
quarter of an inch is not exact it doesn't really matter whether it's
quarter of an inch or three sixteenths but what does matter is whether the two
heads align when they come together like this so we're going to put let's make
one and then use the other one as a template so we're going to come one and
a quarter in from the end of the piece of the here we're going to make a one
and a quarter inch footprint on the end here like that so use your square to get
this quarter of an inch and then we've got a distance of three and seven
eighths which is where we had the hole so we already have this marked here and
then in here this could be any radius you want it to be I'm going to take my
quarter of an inch line up here and then I'm just going to feed this line around
here like this and I don't want it to be too tight it's not necessary for it to
be too tight and the same on this side here you could use a can if you want to
draw around a can you could use anything you want if you want to
make it very uniform like this you can but it's not really necessary let's go
ahead and cut this one I'm going to come inside the radius and stop above my
lines so you can can you see inside there Phil that gives me a point to cut to with my
chisel just take a wide chisel now this is one inch and this is one inch so if
you've got a wider chisel all the better so go right on the line bevel down go
either side so you can widen the cut
so your choice of wood is up to you maple I think would work just fine cherry
would be fine just go ahead and clean up that so I'm down to my line I didn't put
the other line on this side did i this goes to here and then work from this end
as well just work in bevel down and use the bevel just ride the bevel to smooth
up the cut then here I would work down a little bit at a time here
just check the grain orientation see which way the grain is going to run this
seems fine to me happy there you can come in with your chisel across the
grain carefully it snugs that with the heel of your hand just to clean out that
waste wood don't go all the way through if you can avoid it work from both sides
take most of the waste out pretty close same on this side down again and that's
actually enough you don't really need to do any more than that because these are
clumps and just using them will knock off all those rough edges over
six months but of course we're craftsmen and women and we're looking for quality
in our work so I would probably pair this down until
it's acceptably smooth and level just tease those fibers down the corner of
your chisel feather into it here it's a bit rugged right now but it's going to be
fine so I only have one eighth of an inch between here and a cut line that I'm
going to put in here in a minute that when you use the saw for now if you're
fortunate as I am you can use a rasp in here now so pare down just to take those
down a little bit just a cabinet rasp like this one
check that profile see if this profile works that's a little bit big so I'm
going to go with a smaller detail rasp here just to clean up inside there make
it nice and even and if you don't have one of these wrap a piece of sandpaper
around a dowel to go in here that's probably close enough for me to sand
that now just clean it up take the splinters off any splintery bits and
that's the first shaping that you need to do take the corners off and
now we need to come in along this line here with the saw and meet this on the
underside of the hole right in that corner so I'm going to cross here first
of all I want this to be parallel to the surface like this
start dropping my hands to follow the line exactly as close as I can normally
I wouldn't be sawing that way would I because I'd be sawing into my vise so
I'm going to change here i was doing that so you could see now I'm going to
come down this face here and I'm going to drop my hand down here following the
line let's turn around and come from the other side just to even out the cut and
there I've just gone into the hole can you see it's just offset I wanted that I
want 1/8 of wood on here this allows this to flex here come in from the other
side now obviously I'm too shy to get to the bottom of the hole there so because
of the length of my saw you may have a tenon saw that's got full width mine
doesn't so I'm going to switch saws and drop in my also I could have done
the whole thing with this that would have worked just fine too
that's that fold your some paper up go inside here and just sand that take the
corners off ease on everything we have quite a bit more work to do to this yet
we've got to put a recess in here that takes the cam the lever cam on the top
so we've got a little bit of mortising to do so this goes in this part and we
have a mortise to chop in here and these have to be quite exact so we'll lay
those out next and we'll get together and we'll start chopping holes and
shaping a little bit more