Saturday, January 25, 2014

Dougs Clamp Rack

A few weeks ago I made it up to my Dad’s shop in Greenwich, NY. He’s still setting up the shop and working on finding homes for all of the tools he moved up from Long Island in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Sandy. While I was working with him I set up a new Very Super Cool Tools table saw fence (which I’ll post about shortly), cut about 40 drawer bottoms on the table saw, dadoed for the drawer bottoms in the sides, front and back of the drawers and finished a new clamp rack.
My Dads shop during a visit I made over the summer.
The clamp rack is a fairly basic design which he first intended to be a temporary solution to get the clamps off the floor. He assumed that he’d live with it for a while and then make a permanent one from better materials and of a design refined by use.

This initial clamp stand is fairly simple. It’s a box made of ¾” CDX plywood. It rests on a base of plywood that has a dimensional lumber lip for stability and four casters underneath for mobility. There is one half shelf and one full shelf. So far half the base holds heavy duty pipe clamps and the half shelf holds wooden handscrews. He hasn’t figured out what to put on the top shelf.
A view of the clamp rack showing the side, base, half shelf and shelf.
Inside the clamp rack, there the half shelf is missing there are racks running down each side. These racks hold his F-Style clamps.
The racks for the F-Style clamps are deep to accommodate the handles.
They dont have ends so that the clamps can be slid, rather than lifted, out.
On one exterior side is a Woodpecker Heavy Duty Clamp Rack filled with K-Body parallel clamps. The other exterior side is lined with shop made racks of my own design which hold Irwin Quick-Grip clamps. There’s also a half-length rack on that side for the shorter Quick-Grips.
This side holds the Quick-Grip clamps.
These racks were quick to make and the head of the clamp fits in easily.
This was a quick and rewarding project that has helped clean up the shop and made finding and reaching clamps much easier. Though it’s barely been used, my Dad is already regretting not having made of better wood as he thinks this could be the final design.
The finished clamp rack.
How do you store your clamps?
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