Great Auto-Adjusting Clamp Solutions

Sometimes you come across products that are just plain really good problem solvers. And that's what I want to have a look at here. Kreg has got some really cool clamps that self adjust for pressure. Let's have a look at these. I'm sure you're aware, Kreg has been in the pocket hole industry for a long time. And when you put a pocket hole together, the thing that's really important is that the parts are secured down. And the reason for that is we're drilling holes at an angle and if we simply drive screws the parts are gonna climb just a little bit. So we want to secure them to a flat surface. So what I'm talking about with cool products are these Kreg clamps. So we've got two things going here. One, there's a plate that's been led into my table in that plate, there's a clamp. Puts plenty of down pressure on here to hold those parts down so I can do this. But you actually haven't seen the cool part yet. That's three quarter inch stock in there right now. Okay, so the thing to notice is I didn't make any changes to the hold down, it auto adjusted from my three-quarter inch stock to the thicker stock. So that's the real gee whizz part about this. So here's, what's going on. We've got that assembly. So the way that looks is, that's the plate and then that goes into the table. Now let's go all the way to the other side of the bench. If you want a larger surface similar approach, there's another plate you can get. This plate can also be surface mounted or it can be led into the bench. Similar to what we looked at over there. A lot of other clamps laying here, here's what we've got. Let me get another pocket hole. If you're in an application where you can't clamp down, then this one has got an anvil and an anvil, and it's just it's the same dealio is by squeezing, we get our pressure to keep everything lined up. But as I change to different thicknesses of stock, there is no adjustment on this. Now to be clear, there's a small knob inside the clamp. If I need a little more pressure, I can micro adjust that. But again, we're not making gross adjustments to change from one thickness to another. On our hold down plate, we have a short reach in here now. If you need longer reach there's clamps available that'll let you do that. Now, this other one I think is really cool. I've been using a clamp in this style for quite a while. And I know from the classes I teach, students like this once they understand it. Here's what we've got is a anvil on one side and a rod on the other that is the same diameter as the holes we drilled for a pocket hole. So on this one, I use this one all the time on a cabinet with a face frame, where on the blind side of the cabinet, I can drill pocket holes. So then, by putting that pin in one pocket hole like that, I can grab the mating piece and squeeze that closed, drive the screw in the other pocket hole. So, it really is a great face frame application to pull those face frame components down while you're getting the hole, the screw driven, into the other hole. On the end of the bench, they've turned this into a vice. So aluminum plate mounted to the end of the bench. Let us work on edges. But then again, taking advantage of this auto adjust idea, we can put a dog in the bench And use the hold that way. So like I said, it's just, you know, every once in a while, you come across some pretty cool innovative stuff. And I want to share that with you. It's really a time saver and an ease of use that the clamps auto adjust to thickness like they do. It's a cool product that I came across and wanted to share with you.