i am tempted by the sirens of cheapness at harbor freight so i may buy a few the word online is that the ryobi eyebolt/wingnut driver works on these clamps once you remove the crappy stock handle
anyone tried this out
Go for better ones. CP
If you are serious about woodworking and plan to use the clamps often it is very likely that you will seldom use these clamps once you replace them with better ones.
I'll take a bit of a contrarian view. I have about a half dozen of the 12 inch clamps and they work fine for small tasks. They ratchet down pretty tight. How can you go wrong for about $3 each on sale.
Many years ago I had a really big glue up and bought a bunch of HF clamps. I had bought the big all wood clamps (a Jorgenson C clamp knock off) and p lain ductile iron clamps before and they worked great.
So I figured I would be OK if I bought their bar clamps and some squeeze cl amps. They worked for the first glue up, then one or two failed after the second glue up, and then finally after about a year of use all but two of t en had failed. It was worse with their hand squeeze clamps, which I use th ree or four times a week sometimes all day as a second set of hands. Event ually, after light use all of them (about 6) failed completely.
To put this in perspective, I have four bar clamps that were made in the 19
20s or 1930s and have been heavily used. They still work fine, although wi th the bars a little bent (and being really heavy) they are more backup cla mps than anything else. I have some off brand of squeeze clamp I bought at HD about 20 years ago that I have used for all twenty years, and they stil l work fine. Ditto my 3' and 4' Stanley and Irwin clamps which are probabl y in the 15 year range. I have Pony pipe clamps that have to be 50 years o ld that were given to me by a retired contractor that used them for everyth ing you could imagine, and they work just fine.With their short, piss poor track record, HF turned I will never buy anothe r HF clamp unless I figure some way it might be a one time use. Clamps are tools I expect to work, period.
Robert
I've got a bunch of the HF bar clamps in lengths up to 30" They work great as long as you're just gluing up and not trying to simultaneously straighten warped wood :-).
IIRC, HF has 2 versions. One marked Pittsburg, which is what I have, and another "brand" which seems to be the one generating most of the complaints.
Strange enough, my wife has a long arm sewing machine and it came with 4 Pittsburg clamps and I was impressed, for sewing needs. ;~)
Wine, beer and bourbon drinkers have a saying... "Life is too short to drink cheap ___________!"
I'll add clamps to that. Over the years I have accumulated a large collection of Jorgensen clamps of all shapes and sizes. I've also bought some sets of Bessey's (courtesy of a tip here years ago on some fantastic deal available from a major supplier - forget who but it MAY have been Amazon).
Like Timex, all of the above take a licking and keep on ticking. Nothing fancy, just a solid tool that continues to do what it is supposed to do and does it well.
Perhaps only 30% of my collection were bought new. That's the beauty of quality tools... somebody can abuse them and somebody like me can stumble across them on Craigslist, garage sales, estate sales, etc. and with a couple of enjoyable hours in the shop cleaning them up, have a well worn but full functional clamp to add to the collection for pennies on the dollar.
I have eight of the ones they sell now; the ones with the two-tone blue handles. I have used all of them, although not too many times. I suspect that trying to apply great force might be bad for these molded-on handles, but the force they are capable of was plenty to make the glue squeeze out, so they seemed useful at a very low cost. The "fit and finish" doesn't seem too bad actually.
I've tried their "Quick-Grip" style clamps, but only in the store. Those immediately felt like junk. I'm surprised they didn't break right there in the store.
The HF "Quick-Grip" are indeed worthless, but the HF "Quick Gear Clamp" of a couple of years ago are true gems, as good as the Bessey or Jorgensen from which they were cloned.
Hummmmm I'll have to take a look. The Besseys are "ok" I have had problems with them holding for a period of time and then loosing their grip. Bessey replace all 4 of mine with 6 and for certain 2 of those have shown signs of not holding for long periods of time.
Unfortunately they only offered them in 2013, (item number 60434). Thanks to Jeff's post I was able to snag the last 2 at my local HF.
Yep, I totally agree on the gear clamp. I like them better than my KliKlamps.
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