Printed clamps, soft jaws and holders that keep workpieces and tools secure.
Introduction A bench vise is honest about one thing: it does not care what your workpiece looks like afterward. Those hardened, serrated steel jaws that grip a pipe so well will emboss their cross-hatching into hardwood, chew the edges of plastic parts, and leave a finished surface looking like it lost an argument. Every woodworker … Read more
Introduction A band clamp is the kindest way to pull a frame together — and it still manages to bruise it. The strap rounds each corner with all its force concentrated on a few millimeters of wood. Miter tips, the sharpest and most fragile part of the whole frame, get crushed, rounded over, or pushed … Read more
Introduction Spring clamps are the workshop’s quick hands — until they start biting. The factory tips split, slip off, and vanish into the shavings, and the bare metal jaw that remains leaves a crescent dent in every softwood edge, painted surface, and piece of trim it touches. Buying a bag of generic replacement tips often … Read more
Introduction A good workbench does half the holding for you — if you use its dog holes. Those round holes are meant for bench dogs, small stops that give your workpiece something solid to push against, and for hold-down clamps that press work flat while you saw, plane, route, or sand. Metal dogs work well, … Read more
Introduction Painting from a step ladder has an equipment problem. The pail lives on the floor or balanced on the ladder’s little fold-out shelf, the brush has nowhere to rest except in the paint, and every third dip means climbing down for something you forgot. A printed hook set solves it elegantly: a stout hook … Read more
Introduction A hot glue gun at rest is a small hazard of inconvenience: it tips onto its side, the nozzle drools a bead of glue onto the bench, and the cord drags it slowly toward the edge. Most guns come with a flimsy wire rest that folds at the worst moment. A printed stand fixes … Read more
Introduction The magnetic parts dish is one of the great small inventions of the workshop: a shallow stainless bowl with a magnet in its base that grabs screws, bolts, and driver bits and refuses to let them roll away. And yet, in the middle of a job, the dish itself ends up in the wrong … Read more
Getting two boards to stay at a perfect 90 degrees while glue dries sounds simple — until you try it with one hand on each board and the third hand you do not have reaching for a clamp. Corners drift, joints open, and by the time the glue sets, your square drawer box is a … Read more
Introduction Every panel glue-up has the same enemy: boards that bow, cup, or creep out of line while the glue is still wet. You can own a rack of good clamps and still end up with a tabletop that rocks on the bench because two boards dried a millimeter proud of their neighbors. Cauls are … Read more
Introduction Glue-ups have a cruel sense of humour: panels that measured perfectly slide out of square the moment the clamps tighten, and by the time the glue grabs, your cabinet is a parallelogram. Drawers stick, doors hang crooked, and every later step inherits the error. Chasing squareness with a tape measure across diagonals works, but … Read more