Somebody asked in the "clamps" thread how the Dubuque aluminum clamps compare to the Jorgensen version. I replied that the Dubuques seemed stiffer and more heavily built. I've had a chance to measure now, and the Dubuques are indeed signficantly heavier in all relevant respects.
- The Dubuques have 0.125" walls, vs 0.85" wall thickness in the Jorgensen. This is probably why the Dubuques are much more resistant to twisting.
- The Dubuques have 0.096" deep detents to lock the moving head in position, vs 0.042" in Jorgensen. The steel part that engages the detent is also correspondingly beefier on the Dubuque. IMO this may be the most significant practical difference of all, as those detents handle the most concentrated point loads in the entire design.
- The Dubuques have noticeably beefier heads/screws/rivets/etc in the fixed part.
As a mechanical engineer I would guesstimate that the Dubuques can reliably handle at least double the load, and probably more. The Aluminum bars in either can handle O(thousands) of lbf in tension, so the fittings (and particularly those stops/detents) will be the practical limiter, and Dubuque has big advantages there.
As always, you get what you pay for. I think that the HF and (to a much lesser extent) Jorgensen clamps are why some people are skeptical of Aluminum bar clamps for heavy work. The Dubuques are in an entirely different league, and I don't hesitate to load the living daylights out of mine.
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