Clamping technique

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ruby@magpage.com
Posts: 1564
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:03 am
Location: Chestertown Maryland

Clamping technique

Post by ruby@magpage.com »

I installed an ivoroid ring as the start of a rosette recently. It was a piece of binding that i bent into a circle with a hair dryer, and since it was over 1/4" wide it didn't want to lay flat. So the dilemma was how to clamp it. In the past I have used a couple of bench planes piled up, but I wanted to be able to see all around to make sure everything was sitting down properly. Plus I came up with something a little more elegant - several foot long sticks with a drywall screw in the end of each - see the first shot.

The clamps are positioned in from the end several inches - as much as possible. Worked great, didn't get in the way visually, and any CA glue residue didn't stick them down. I did 1/2 of the rosette at a time. I also used it on the rope rings around the ivoroid, but they were pretty tame in comparison.

A couple of days later I had to epoxy glue in a dutchman (a patch for excavated rotted or questionable wood) on a mast and needed a way to keep the patch stable in an area where a clamp wouldn't work so easily - gave it a shot and it worked perfectly. Again, the epoxy residue did not stick the head of the screw to the white oak very much at all - it popped right off - second shot.

For size comparison - the red wood top weighs less than a pound, and the 58', 14" diameter mast weighs about 2200 lbs. The mast is Douglas Fir and all of the pieces added to it are Osage Orange.

Ed
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Ed M
Stray Feathers
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Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:39 pm
Location: Ladysmith, BC

Re: Clamping technique

Post by Stray Feathers »

An elegant solution indeed! I'll remember it . . .

And if I can add a friendly amendment from the west coast, "Douglas Fir" is not actually a fir (more like a hemlock in that its cones hang down) and the correct name and spelling is Douglas-fir (at least until the botanists change it . . . ).

Bruce W.
ruby@magpage.com
Posts: 1564
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:03 am
Location: Chestertown Maryland

Re: Clamping technique

Post by ruby@magpage.com »

Actually, Stray, it is its own genus because they couldn't figure out where to put it - Pseudotsuga, which means false Hemlock. It has hakf a dozen names, including Douglas Fir and Oregon Pine Go to your local lumberyard and ask for Douglas Fir and they know exactly what you mean.

My brother and I built a house for a guy in southern NJ in 1976. The local lumberyard only carried Doug Fir stuff, so we built the entire house out of framing lumber, plywood, and even the 3X custom stair of Douglas FIr. The whole house was that great pink-orange color before the walls were covered - remarkable

Ed
Ed M
Stray Feathers
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Re: Clamping technique

Post by Stray Feathers »

Right you are Ed; there are two subspecies in BC (coastal and interior) and there is another species restricted to southern California. I have done a lot of building and renovating with it. Our present house is a 1970s spec bungalow, which we updated at one point with new windows. I replaced all the interior trims with edge-grain D-fir (now called "vertical grain" I guess) so I get to live with that lovely colour all year. A few people use it for tonewood; a friend near here has done so and it sounds great; I am still in my early days as a luthier but am looking forward to trying it one day. Bruce W.
ruby@magpage.com
Posts: 1564
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:03 am
Location: Chestertown Maryland

Re: Clamping technique

Post by ruby@magpage.com »

I was just thinking of a "plank" of Douglas Fir that I got to work with in the mid-90's on a large tall ship construction project. They got in a single board that was 3" thick, 54" wide, and over 40 feet long. It had the center of the tree in the middle that wasn't good for much, but the whole thing got turned into main decking about 4-1/2" wide, all of it with perfectly vertical grain. It was bigger than 5 sheets of plywood laid end-to-end.

Ed
Ed M
Stray Feathers
Posts: 677
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:39 pm
Location: Ladysmith, BC

Re: Clamping technique

Post by Stray Feathers »

That's an amazing piece of wood! In my younger (and less well-informed) days, I worked in a coastal sawmill where I saw logs as large as 6 feet in diameter being cut on huge bandsaws called "head rigs". The large cants being taken off yielded a lot of edge grain wood. The "head sawyer" as he was known made more money than some of the managers, his job was that important. Now there is only a little of the best old-growth D-fir left (perhaps more in Washington). There is a small company in our town that cuts poles for hydro lines etc. and they are sometimes called upon to supply Douglas-fir masts for tall ships. It's a side business they take great pride in.
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