Afternoon Creekers,
Getting into woodworking can be quite intimidating in many aspects. Where to buy the wood? What wood to buy? What tools? etc. I am early in my woodworking journey and have waded through the muck to compile a pretty good selection of tools and supplies. Probably more than I need but I tend to be one that doesnt like to have to get creative on how to do something. I'd rather pay money for a tool designed to do a specific thing. Anyway, one thing I havent gotten my head around is clamps.
When I first started out I knew I would need clamps and a lot of them. I had heard good things about Harbor Freight's clamp selection so I took a trip there one day and bought probably 30 clamps of various styles and sizes. Upon starting to use them I realized I made some mistakes in my selection. F style clamps are great and probably my most used clamps but buying a bunch of the 36" and 48" variety proved unwise, especially from Harbor Freight (they flex A LOT).
The biggest issue with clamps is that they are freaking expensive. I can't tell you how many times I have sat in Home Depot, Lowes, Woodcraft, etc and stared at clamps with the intention of buying a few only to walk away with nothing for the fear of making a bad purchase.
I should go ahead and get to my point of this post...what does everyone recommend as far as clamps go? I'd love to hear the preferred style of clamps for <12", <24", etc. Bar clamps, pipe clamps, f style, c, parallel...the list goes on and on. I'd love to get a feel for what everyone recommends for various tasks requiring clamps.
Seems to me that you really cant have enough of the 12" or so f style clamps. I have done quite a few laminations and those come in super handy and you can run through 20 of them in a heartbeat. I recently came across this four pack at Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/p/BESSEY-Cl...C4PK/205086977 Seemed like a pretty good price so I picked up a couple.
Thanks