Swivel Handle Clamps for guitar repair and building
V-3704
Get better control over your clamping pressure with a right-angle handle. It's easier to make ever-so-slight adjustments, or really crank it down!
Video Transcription
[on-screen text reads: Swivel Handle Clamps - Stewart-MacDonald]
Features of the Swivel Handle Clamps
Dan Erlewine: Here's a new bar clamp. It's new to me, anyway, and I think pretty new in general.
I really like this clamp and I like it so much, and I don't believe I'm saying this, I like it better than the old orange Jorgenson clamps that I've used for 40 years.
It's got a stronger back. I think it might be extruded. Whatever it is, it's really stiff and it's not going to bend like the older bar clamps. Actually it bends over and makes the head. It's not a pinned-on cast piece.
I like the jaw foot. It's flat. There's no mold marks. It's round on the edges and thin. It's long and wide.
I like the Acme quick thread that gets you there in a hurry, and it's a lot bigger diameter than the Jorgenson clamps.
I like the foot. It's big and it's wide. There's never been a clamp that squares up this quick, just rigid.
What I like most about it is the handle. It flips over sideways and gives me the greatest control that I've ever had in a clamp. Just doing this, you have control. There's all kinds of ways to get more squeeze or less squeeze.
The depth of the throat is a lot deeper than my other clamps. This is an inch difference. Plus, I've weighed these. This weighs three ounces more than that one. If you put six of those on a peghead, that's a pound less weight that you'd be adding during your glue-up.
Easily work in areas where a lot of clamps are required
This peghead is one of the worst broken peghead I've ever seen or fixed. There's been a lot of glue-ups and different operations and pieces of wood, and I'm using Hide Glue through the whole thing.
With the old clamps, when you have this many that close together, you can't really get a hold of it. You end up trying to put pressure like that, or you get your wrist like this. With these, you just bend it out of the way, tighten the one you want, it's unbelievable. If I could have had this all my life, I would've been thrilled.
Check out how bad this guitar looked when it came in. It took a lot of pieces of wood to make this fix from the back, from the top, from the side. There's new ears on it. The next thing it gets will be the peghead overlay.
No more cutting clamp handles
There have been a lot of times with the old clamps that I've actually cut half the handle off or more to get it to fit into the job I'm trying to do.
What I'm doing here is routing some pockets for these inlays in a fingerboard. I have to clamp it tight to do that and one issue I run into is the clamps handles hit the table often, many times. So what I've done is cut the handles off and I've done that to a lot of my clamps. With the swivel handle clamps that doesn't have to be a problem because I just bend the handle and go about my work.
Superior control
When you're clamping up like this, it's just as much about loosening as tightening, it's control and these are the most sensitive controls I have had. It's probably that handle because when you bend it like this, you can feel the slightest pressure. It's wonderful.
I can't really describe it. You ought to get yourself a couple and try them.
