need stiff wood

[John Keeney]

I'm wanting to build an odd clamp, with about a three foot long reach. What wood would you chose to resist bending? Hickory?

[Frank McVey]

You can buy the cast iron clamp jaws. Any time I've seen these used, they've just been fitted up with good old 2x1 pine.

Suck it and see - it won't cost the earth and I expect it will do you fine.

Cheers

Frank

[Hitch]

"John Keeney" wrote in news:3fcef648 [e-mail]:

I imagine hickory would be fine. Just make sure you have a large dimension in the clamping force plane. For example, given two I-beams of equal weight, one with narrow flanges and a wide web will be stiffer in the plane of the web than the one with a narrow web with wide flanges.

I bet you're going to need to make it quite wide to provide a lot of clamping force at three feet.

You might check out wooden boatbuilding web sites for examples of long- reach wooden clamps. These are frequently used in clamping planking, usually shop-built from plywood.

[CW]

1018.