Mobile clamp racks?

Re: Mobile clamp racks?

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

When I had my shop in the basement, I had most everything on wheels. When I moved out of the basement cave, I chose to put things against the walls to keep the workspace clear. The only exception was the mobile rack for my turning tools. I much prefer taking a few steps to get a clamp or some such from a wall rack as I'm not tripping over mobile stuff that I kept having to move out of the way to get to something else.

Re: Mobile clamp racks?

William Duffield

The only "mobile" clamp racks I have are for my small, mostly spring clamps. Each "rack" is a 3/4" x 3/4" hardwood offcut. Mobility is achieved by screwing an eye hook in the top of the stick, and screw eyes into the ceiling joists or ceiling wherever you may want to hang them, either when in use or for storage. You can clamp the clamps in any of 4 directions. The length of the stick depends on the height of your ceiling and either how low you want to stoop to reach the lowest clamp or your bench height, if you plan to hang them over the bench when in use.

If you find your pipe clamp wall arrangement is too crowded, it's probably because you have not arranged the clamps most efficiently. In most shops, you see them arranged as if the effect was to show off how many clamps the woodworker had in their collection. I know that's not the real reason, but that's how it appears. If instead, you realize that clamps of the same type and length can be arranged one in front of the next, on a longer redesigned clamp support, because it doesn't matter which one you use first, then you can usually save a lot of wall space in exchange for some less useful space in front of the wall.

This rack holds as many as 42 Bessey K-body Revo clamps of 6 different lengths in only 28" of wall space.

The three pairs of brackets on the right side are pretty clear, but the photo of the three pairs of brackets on the left side is very strangely aligned, and appear to be only 4 brackets. In reality, there are six of them, and all 12 brackets are identical. This trick photography was unintentional.

Re: Mobile clamp racks?

Keith

Here's mine, made from some leftover casters and a few 2x4s and 1x4s

Re: My "Mobile" Spring Clamp Rack

William Duffield

Trying again to post the "mobile" clamp rack

Re: My "Mobile" Spring Clamp Rack

Jim Matthews

Fully laden, my metal clamp rack tends to "rack" over and is unstable.

+1 for wall mounting.

Re: Mobile clamp racks?

Barry Irby

I don't have a mobile clamp rack or room for one. I ahve several tools on mobile bases, but my shop is so small and crowded not much moves around.

My clamps stay in drawers and I have a bucket of C-clamps under the drill press. Most of my long clamps hag from a rake I made from pallet wood.

That's idea you might use. Made some strong fingers that are about 1 1/2" by 2" that project out horizontally with about an inch of space between them. Like a comb. Two to four clamps can hang in each slot depending on the size of the heads. A lot of clamps in a relatively small space. Works well.

Re: Mobile clamp racks?

Jim Dillon

JL, here is my "mobile" clamp rack. Truth be told, I haven't moved it much but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Like most of my ideas, this one was not original. Got the idea from a picture in Scott Landis's book The Workshop Book, Taunton Press, page 180 by woodworker Ken Bishop. Not the prettiest, but it is versatile. It is made from 2x4s. I simply store my Bessy Tradesman clamps and spring clamps in 5 gallon buckets. Seems to work for me. Hope this helps. Jim

OT: a recorder

Jack Dover

Just looking at that reel in the last photo and wondering whether that recorder is still functional?

Re: OT: a recorder

Jim Dillon

Ha, no both my Sony and Tandberg have gone belly-up. So, I ended up buying a refurbished Teac that is nice. I'm in the process of digitizing around 70+ reel-to-reel tapes of music. This endeavor follows digitizing my CDs, LPs (33 and 78s), cassettes, etc. Digitizing old reel-to-reel tapes is proving to be hit and miss due to the issue of "sticky-tape" phenomena. Jim

Re: OT: a recorder

Jack Dover

Yeah, lost a few reels this way, was storing my reels in an old freezer in a plastic wrap since then. Later had to let everything go in one of many moves. Wasn't a huge loss, all my collection could be had today with not too much effort. However I do miss the process.