Clamp Blocks
George VondriskaDescription
If you’ve ever tried to clamp two pieces together that are cut at less than a 90-degree angle, you know how difficult it is to keep the joint from sliding around before it dries. George Vondriska has a neat trick to resovle this clamping challenge using clamp blocks. A WoodWorkers Guild of America (WWGOA) original video.
I'm working on a flag case. I've got all the parts cut for it, and I'm to the tricky part, which is assembling the case. The part that's really tricky is that all the components come together at angles, so there's really no great way for me to take a clamp and put it on here, squeeze that joint together because the clamp is gonna simply slide off of that wedge shape. So I've got a great solution for this, and that is to temporarily attach clamping blocks to the pieces here. So I've got these blocks. I actually cut these at the same time as I did the joinery, so the angle on the block and the angle on the joint are the same. That way I can fasten this on, and I can get a parallel clamping surface. Fastening, I want that to just be temporary, so I'm gonna do that with hot glue. Just a couple of drops is all it takes. And what I need to do is get a clamp block on each side of each joint. Now with the clamp blocks in place, it's gonna be very easy to get good clamp pressure on every joint. In a project like this, I'm gonna put glue on both halves of the joint because this is an end grain glue up, and that end grain is gonna be prone to soaking the glue in. So in order to make sure I have enough glue on each part of the joint, I'm gonna do both halves. I'm keeping the glue away from that inside edge, and that's gonna help prevent the glue from seeping inside the case where it's gonna be real difficult to clean up later. Now we're ready to insert the glass, get this whole thing to come together. With the benefit of these blocks on here, I can get a clamp to straddle that joint and get really, really good pressure on it to make sure it's gonna close. I'm gonna start with just one on each corner. Then I can come back and finesse one, each corner as I need to, to get it into alignment, and then add a second clamp. Once the glue has had a chance to dry, we can very easily knock these blocks right off of here. That's all set. All we have to do now is give that wood glue a chance to dry. Once the glue is dry, you can pop your clamps off. The next step is to remove these blocks we put on here temporarily. You do want to be careful that you don't hit the project, you only hit the block. I want to rap it with a mallet. So a good way to do it is to use a block against the block, like this. That way we can pop that right off of there. Now, there is a little bit of hot glue residue on here. Here's what I would do. Get all the blocks off. Take a sharp chisel, and pare that residue off of the face. Then some finish sanding. You'll be ready to apply a coat of finish to this project, and my flag case will be all done.
I would use two-sided tape
I like to know how feasible it would be to use double face tape instead of glue?
What is the angle cut on box sections
Very informative
Is there another glue that can be used instead of hot glue for temporary use? (I don't have a hot glue gun)
Worried about removing hot glue residue, would narrow strips of double stick tape work just as well and be less likely, at least in my experience, to leave a residue that makes finishing problematic.
A smart thing to do before the glue up would be to complete the finish on the inside sections first, as the task to do it once complete, would be so much more difficult, especially having glass in this type of project.
Hot glue will soak into pores of wood. After scraping surface glue off, how do you remove glue from the wood pores?
Every time I've used hot glue to temporarily hold something together I've gotten a lot of tear out when I tried to disassemble it. Is there a particular type of hot glue that you're using that doesn't hold as well? I just use what is available at my home center and there doesn't seem to be any choice of type of glue.
And I have always just used a couple strap binders. Looks like it will be a very nice looking project.