I have a serious fascination with clamps and tell everyone that you simply cannot ever have enough clamps. Clamps are that extra set of hands that help make us work safer and more productive in the shop and on the job. Bessey Tools recently introduced an improved version of their toggle clamp with the Auto-Adjust Toggle Clamps.
One of the keys to successful woodworking projects is taking time to set up jigs that help us reproduce matching pieces, and hold work pieces tightly during cutting, routing, and drilling. Jigs that have built-in simple adjustments are extremely useful and really help improve productivity. These new Auto-Adjust Toggle Clamps from Bessey are very useful when building jigs.
The BESSEY Auto-Adjust Toggle Clamp automatically adjusts to variations in work piece dimensions while maintaining constant clamping force with a max vertical opening distance of 2-3/4″. No more time-consuming manual adjustment of the spindle height to maintain a safe and correct clamping force. The removable non-marring plastic cap is included on the 7/8″-diameter pads. The integrated clamping force adjustment screw can be used to create an actually applied clamping force from 25 to 550 lbs. (max holding capacity 700 lbs.). One BESSEY Auto-Adjust Toggle Clamp can replace a range of competitive clamps. The large flanged baseplate is designed for use with 1/4″ or M6 fasteners.
I recently received samples of three of these new auto-adjust toggle clamps to use in the shop including:
STC-HH50 2″ Horizontal Toggle Clamp
STC-HH70 2-3/4″ Horizontal Toggle Clamp
STC-IHH25 1″ Inline Toggle Clamp
I created a couple of easy to use jigs to accompany my table saw cross-cut sled. What I love about these new clamps is how versatile they are and how quickly you can build custom jigs.
Below is a jig that I added to the fence on my cross-cut sled. The jig allows me to put downward pressure on a work piece that sits against the fence. As you can see, the rotating pressure pads work really great on unusual surfaces. The auto-adjust clamps easily adjust to the thickness of the work piece which makes set-up very fast.
I also built a very simple, yet effective jig for cutting 45 degree miters on the cross-cut sled as well. For this jig I installed the auto-adjust toggle clamps on a board that I cut to 45 degrees. The mitered board has another board attached to the back of it so I can clamp it to my fence on the cross-cut sled. I can quickly clamp work pieces to the sled at 45 degrees and cut them without any slipping. The nice part is the end of the miter board shows exactly where the cut will fall.
To give you an idea of how the Bessey Auto-Adjust Toggle Clamps work I wanted to share a short video that they have. This video gives a great preview on how easily the clamps adjust to different thicknesses. The clamps use a special patented mechanism in the clamp that allows it to apply a constant pressure regardless of the thickness. A picture is worth a thousands words….so I suppose a video is worth 10 times that.
These clamps are sold all over at woodworking supply stores and online. I’ve included links below to Amazon if you’re looking to buy them online.
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