Record clamps on eBay - first report
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>Yesterday, the UPS man delivered a box with 5 Record bar clamps I'd purchased - $10 to purchase, $12 to ship (our son points out that part of the eBay reality is that, for many items, shipping cost exceeds purchase cost; he's paid 25 cents for items that cost US$2 to ship). I fooled around with them a bit, and can report:
1. They're not Besseys or Wetzlers. The bar is thinnish and the screw has only about 2" of thread, so you couldn't use them to pull an assembly into shape.
2. On the other hand, they're not 99-cent counter specials, either. The thread is Acme or some similar pattern so they tighten up quickly, the sliding head seems to hold well (I have a set of Taiwanese specials from a garage sale on which the heads can slide suddenly when clamping up; the Record clamps lock in pretty well as soon as you set them), and the construction seems sound.
I think, for someone who can't afford to spend $24 per clamp, they're pretty decent tools. When the lottery fairy visits, of course, I'll be replacing them with top of the line clamps...