For me, woodworking is a time of relaxation—except when gluing up. Then it is a race against the clock involving sweaty palms, bad language, and an occasional airborne clamp.

At first I thought a set of simple risers would ease my panel glue-ups by lifting the boards off the benchtop and letting me position clamps freely underneath. But I soon realized that much of the chaos came from the clamps tipping over and otherwise changing positions while I applied glue and aligned the boards. I needed a way to keep the clamps still until I could tighten them. That led to the clamping frame shown here.

In addition to the risers, the frame uses a pair of crosspieces with matching cutouts to accept either bar clamps or pipe clamps. When placed in their cutouts, the clamps stay put. The risers and crosspieces are joined with simple cross-laps, with the crosspieces notched in several places to vary the frame’s length. Better yet, I made some slightly arched cauls and sized them to fit snugly into the clamp cutouts. These help keep the joints flush.

To ensure that the frame doesn’t interfere with assembly, I cut the joinery and cutouts so that the panel being glued registers only against the tops of the risers. The tops of the crosspieces, as well as the bars or pipes of the clamps, sit slightly lower.

Using this clamping frame is worlds better than laying clamps directly on the bench, and it takes only a minute to set up and makes glue-ups nearly stress-free. When not in use, the components take up minimal storage space.

Drawn by Jim Richey

Drawn by Jim Richey

Drawn by Jim Richey

John S. Jacobs, Weston, MA