Hand-Screw How-To
Wooden hand screws are versatile, but they can be confounding to use. We'll help you eliminate frustration and show you a few tricks to get the most from these clamps.
Hand screws are one of the most useful tools and one of the most misunderstood tools. I tried using them for years I gave up. It’s safe to say that they’re not an intuitive tool to use. If there weren’t so many of them in people’s shops who I truly trust, I would have given up on them long ago. It turns out that like a lot of stuff, there’s a technique.
The trick is to always hold the top handle in your left hand and the bottom handle in your right hand. When you tighten the clamp, you only spin the handle in your right hand, which is much easier to control than spinning both handles. Plus, if you hold the clamp like this on a consistent basis, you build muscle memory and soon you won’t even have to think about which direction to turn the clamp to get it to tighten or loosen. I struggled with these clamps for years until I realized that I wasn’t holding the clamp consistently, so I never knew which direction would tighten or loosen the clamp.
Now that I’ve learned the secrets of the wooden hand-screw, I am consistently buying them at flea markets for $5-10. In fact, after buying about a dozen, the only problem I have with my wooden hand-screws is finding a place to store them!
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Comments
Useful tip! These clamps are great for holding thing vertical on the bench. This simple tip makes them even more useful.
Seems so simple, but very useful tip. Thanks!
I taught my students to use this style of wood clamp to hold small, irregular, or round pieces at the bandsaw for safe cutting. The clamp positions the operator's hands away from the blade, and provides a nice large handle for holding small or round pieces. They rest squarely and slide well on the saw table. If the blade happens to nick a clamp end, not a big deal, as there is no blade damage. "Clamps are wood, it grows on trees, we'll buy more!"
The better quality clamps usually have acme threads on the screws
Thanks Bob! Very helpful!
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I use these once in a while but my go to clamps are Irwin Quickgrips then bar and/or pipe clamps.
As a left hander I think it would all work if you just flipped the hand screw over putting the middle handle to your right. Left handers like myself always have to take right hander's input and figure out what will work for them. It's just an issue we live with all our lives.
Gosh - this is just complete nonsense! If you want to use a handscrew clamp to apply parallel pressure, then you just need to get the jaws parallel to start, and crank the clamp like a windlass until it's close to the width you need. Then, to do the final tightening, you turn BOTH handles - not just one, so that the jaws remain parallel.
This ain't rocket science. Have these guys ever actually used handscxrew clamps?
user-7138398
That's how I was taught in Gr 7 shop class. Close them to make them parallel to begin with...
When I think about it now--Thirty, 11 (Gr 7) or 12 year-olds (Gr 8) and just one teacher, using a drill press, lathe, band saw, disk sander, all manner of hand tools, power jig saws and sanders, oxyacetylene brazing or welding (Gr 8), finishing with shellac, varnish, rattle can painting, oil paint and the red metal fireproof can into which one put used rags. In a nod to the pretext of safety, only the teacher was allowed to use the tablesaw.
How do I remember all of this? I still have the bowl that I turned, the dowelled tie rack, the cedar duck that was finished using the method of burning and wire brushing the surface (which I have now learned to be Japanese "Shou Sugi Ban"), the elliptical cutting board (I remember researching how to make an "oval" and learning about the two nails and string method), a key chain using that new "Plexiglass" stuff and learning how to polish the edges and bend it with the help of heat. A marshmallow roasting fork....
One had a lot of freedom to make any project one wanted--using some particular material, tool or finishing technique. I remember being impressed by a few minibikes that were made using old lawnmower engines. Some fathers, no doubt, had a hand in those projects. --It was a large school and there were multiple Gr 7 and 8 classes.
I'm of "boomer age" and I lived to tell it like is was. Oh! I forgot. The girls took "Home Economics" so that they could be "good housewives". ...annnd, we'll end it there.
Well Ben, you have yet again demonstrated why the online membership is worth it. Firstly, I got to this article via Megan Fitzpatrick's blog on clamps. I'm not sure if this is a online member article or not. Having said that, I didn't bother to use the online FWW much till I was a member as nothing more frustrating than finding things you can't see.
From Megan's blog, this video was linked. I hated this style of clamp. My dad had purchased two of them for me. I thought they were crap as I couldn't get the to work properly. Now, I can't wait till work is over and give them a try. Heck, I didn't even know this video existed till it was linked. Thank you again.
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