After purchasing a Kreg pocket hole joining kit, I've decided I needed a proper pocket hole clamp due to movement in the joint when glueing up.
After searching the web, I decided on the Rutlands clamps due to the price and the fact that they come as a set of four so you can clamp and square up a frame at the same time.
The clamps are £30 give or take a few pence.
They arrived today and straight off the cuff I'm really surprised about the quality!!
The web site pictures show a clamp with screws for the threaded section as if the housing encloses a nut but instead I received four clamps which are cast in one section and machined afterwards.
The acme thread is perfect and really smooth to operate. The handle is spring loaded so when the piece is clamped the handle can be turned to allow the jig to sit flat on a bench.
Now to the not so good points...
The 9.5mm peg which goes into one of the pocket holes sticks out quite a lot, which means on material 18mm or under the clamp doesn't sit on the face of the timber and the peg tries to pull out.
I've had to shorten one of the pegs by around 6 - 8mm so that my 12mm mdf will accept the peg fully.
Secondly the clamps are humped on the back to make them stronger to flexing but this in turn makes applying a clamp very hard to keep the faces perfectly flat, for that I am going to apply an mdf backing to square up the back.
Here's some pictures to show what I mean.
After searching the web, I decided on the Rutlands clamps due to the price and the fact that they come as a set of four so you can clamp and square up a frame at the same time.
The clamps are £30 give or take a few pence.
They arrived today and straight off the cuff I'm really surprised about the quality!!
The web site pictures show a clamp with screws for the threaded section as if the housing encloses a nut but instead I received four clamps which are cast in one section and machined afterwards.
The acme thread is perfect and really smooth to operate. The handle is spring loaded so when the piece is clamped the handle can be turned to allow the jig to sit flat on a bench.
Now to the not so good points...
The 9.5mm peg which goes into one of the pocket holes sticks out quite a lot, which means on material 18mm or under the clamp doesn't sit on the face of the timber and the peg tries to pull out.
I've had to shorten one of the pegs by around 6 - 8mm so that my 12mm mdf will accept the peg fully.
Secondly the clamps are humped on the back to make them stronger to flexing but this in turn makes applying a clamp very hard to keep the faces perfectly flat, for that I am going to apply an mdf backing to square up the back.
Here's some pictures to show what I mean.
