Locutus wrote:
Speaking of clamps, what is the difference between "good" clamps and cheap
clamps? I have been using bar and c-clamps that I picked up at Big Lots for
about $5-$10 each (a lot of different sizes) and they have worked fine for
me.

Having never really used high qaulity clamps, what is a clamp that costs 5x
as much going to do for me?

I don't know what it would do for you, but I think it depends on what
you are clamping. Like most here, I probably have about 80 - 100
clamps. Some of them I use a lot, some not much at all.

I have some cheapo clamps, and they are good for some things. But what
I noticed about my cheapies compared to my pipe clamps, Besseys or
Irwin bar clamps is the flex. When I really clamp down on something
with cheap bar, squeeze or C clamps, there is a lot of torsion rotation
in the clamp body.

This rotation as the body of the clamp flexes makes it a lot harder to
clamp. If you are doing a large glue up, the torsion created by the
body flex of the clamps will make it hard to keep the clamps in place,
and worse can make it move after you have carefully glued, placed and
clamped the pieces exactly where you want them.

I use the cheapies as needed, but if I am glueing up anything large
that I really need to be exactly right I use the good clamps.

Robert