Greetings and Salutations...

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 20:50:15 +0000, David Billington
wrote:

you need to be wary of cheap clamps. I have seen a cheap malleable iron
C clamp that gave up in the middle of the back of the C section. Nice
grain structure evident but not much evidence of any malleable nature.

This is a good point. For "C" clamps, I tend to prefer
decent quality ones. The Pittsburgh "F" clamps from HF are not a bad
deal, and actually, I discovered a bit ago that HF "C" clamps are not
iron...but steel. I hacked a great mod to the deck height adjustment
mechanism on my John Deere lawn tractor by cutting out the threaded
section of one of their 6" clamps and welding it to the support arm.
Probably not the greatest steel in the world, but, it has worked
really well for several years now.
In general I have found that I would rather buy the best,
and only cry once...but "best" can be a flexible concept...
Regards
Dave Mundt