Our hands are remarkably adept at holding, positioning and steadying things during home repair and improvement projects. But we only have two of them. That’s where clamps come in: They’re available in a huge variety of shapes and sizes ranging from small but handy gadgets to heavy-duty indispensable tools.

Here are 10 types of clamps — some useful for lots of jobs, some designed to specialize — that will hold projects tightly while you work.

• Quick clamps. These are the most popular clamps for general carpentry and woodworking projects because they are so easy to use. The basic design is a C-shape with the top leg fixed at 90 degrees to a metal bar. The bottom leg, which holds the tensioning screw, has a cam release and can slide up and down the bar so you can quickly slide the tensioning screw against the work. You need only a few turns on the screw handle to tighten things up.

• Pipe and bar clamps. These work like quick clamps with a fixed end and a sliding end, but cover longer distances. On pipe clamps, the tensioning screw is a heavy-duty crank that drives a wide metal pad with tremendous force. Several varieties can be fitted to any length of pipe as long as it has threaded ends.

• C-clamps. These clamps, which look like their name, are a little old-fashioned because they take a long time to tighten and often apply too much force at the small metal pad on the end of the tensioning screw. Newer models have hard plastic pads that apply force over a wider area. The body is a basic C-shape, but the screw is turned with a comfortable, screwdriver-type handle with a quick-release button so you don’t have waste time winding the threads all the way up and down.

• Edge clamps. Some C-clamps and quick clamps have a second tensioning screw at 90 degrees to the main screw. This variety is valuable if you want to glue a top and an edge at the same time, say, at the edge of a countertop or table. The open ends of the C grab the top and bottom of the table, and the center screw presses against the edge trim.

• Handscrews. This is another traditional clamp that is hard to replace because it can apply even pressure over a large surface area. The pressure comes from an opposing pair of large wooden jaws that are tightened together with two threaded rods. On the down side, making adjustments is time-consuming and the clamps are expensive.

• Spring clamps. These work like a finger squeezing against a thumb. They are very handy for positioning material temporarily while you measure, mark, drill or drive a screw. Two small and two large spring clamps will serve for carpentry and woodworking projects, particularly for gluing, and as an invaluable third hand when the other two are busy with hammer and nail.

• Locking pliers. These double-duty tools have jaws like pliers but a spring-loaded lock that turns them into clamps. Well-known trade names, such as the Vise-Grip and Craftsman’s Robo-Grip from the American Tool Co., often are used more as clamps than pliers, for instance, to hold pipes together when soldering.

Some varieties have an adjusting screw in the handle to take up tension; others build the tensioning into a squeeze of the handle. There are dozens of models with differently shaped jaws for special tasks.

Some tools in the extensive Vise-Grip line, for example, have blossomed into bizarre-looking but useful tools with C-clamp-type jaws that reach out 18 inches from the basic pliers. (The Vise-Grip tool was invented by a Nebraska blacksmith, the Robo-Grip by a Pennsylvania dentist.)

• Corner clamps. These clamps hold two pieces of wood at a 90-degree angle. Most have a holding fence and tensioning screws to keep the pieces in place after you’ve snugged up the corner joint, and work only at 90 degrees. If your projects get more complicated, look for an adjustable or multi-angle model.

Most corner clamps can’t accept wood more than a few inches wide — the sizes you would be most likely to use in a picture frame. For that job, you could use a standard corner clamp that assembles one corner at a time. But you might get more use and reduce assembly time by investing in a frame clamp that handles all four corners at once.

• Frame clamps. Specialized frame clamps apply pressure to four corners at the same time. Some varieties have arms that pull each corner toward a center tensioning device. Others work like a group of corner clamps connected with long threaded rods.

The advantage is that a four-cornered frame stays together as you glue and nail. The disadvantage is that the clamps seem to ensure squareness, but often don’t. They aid in assembly, but you still have to true up each corner.

• Belt clamps. Most clamps can’t handle irregular shapes. So when you want to re-glue rungs on a splay-legged chair, for example, you need a belt clamp. Most work like a simple tourniquet. The flexible belt conforms to atypical shapes, applying even pressure that can be cranked tight with a ratchet mechanism. Some manufacturers include a variety of corner blocks that slide along the belt to concentrate clamping pressure wherever it’s needed. A belt clamp with four corner blocks also can double as an effective picture frame clamp