Love the work "arounds" you employ . Great series on these clamps. Thanks.

I learned two things in the first MINUTE! Putting a parallel on top of the two parts to keep them flat and using a pointer and a scale to find center...BRILLIANT MAX!!

The clamps turned out beautifully 👍. I suspect you’ll grow quite fond of the style.

I watched every moment with attention to the details of best measure. Thank you for the lesson. One particular take away, Max, is the need for economy of motions thru a work flow. That is to say, strike for a clear process as to steps in progress. Also, very nice to see the season. It is moving to summer here with warming temps. Regards from Washington State, US. M.

Makes you appreciate the work that goes into such a tool really. Its just a clamp but we do take for granted or gloss over that fact, with alot of the things we buy and whine about the cost of it.

I say old bean, you do a quite fair ol job of it for a hobby machinist! Good show! Brilliant! LoL. Good class Max, some handy tips there. The macro shots were spot on as well, good work! 👍

Hi Max, Great work as always. I've been using these type of clamps for years, couldn't do without them now, a real addition to the shop if you have to piss around with toolmakers clamps and are in need of a third hand. Best wishes, Mal.

Nice job Max, they turned out great! I love the trick of using the parallels to level the two bosses with the flats on. I wondered how you were going to do it and you got me! Nice little how to that one! I think if I were to make a pair the only thing extra I'd do was to nickel plate all the steel parts for rust prevention and aesthetics.

Great project Max. The best part is you will use them for a very long time. Cheers

Nicely done Max 👍👍 And DOUG GREY, your kits look to be in the ROLLS ROYCE class 👌👌

Final tools sure were nice looking.

really like those clamps, gonna make them in the future when all my other projects are done. wel done max, clamps turned out really nice. cheer ben.

This project was quite the journey and you had to adapt to a bunch of non-ideal situations. I still love shapers, even though they are not the fastest material removal method. Cheers, Max.

Good thing I was wearing my glases while watching. Otherwise I would have a shaper chip in my eye now :) Clamps are looking really good. Have fun with them.

Another fine job. There is something satisfying about making your own tools. Tools were the first projects in school shop classes and I used most of them for close to 50 years.

Loved the slowmo shaping.

Thanks Max I particularly like the pointer & rule centring trick you showed on the mill.

They look really nice and tight. Spot on Max. Am enjoying these longer videos. Thank you 👍🇳🇱

Gday Max, these clamps are a great project, they have really good clamping force and I’ve used mine more then I ever thought I would, nice result mate

Very nice looking clamps Max. My brother brought me a pair of these back in about 1972 here in UK, They are called Crab Clamps here. They have served me well all that time and are still good and firm, and grip well. My only gripe with using them on the mill is that they always seem to be in the way of something, and are not easy to use one handed while holding something with the other hand.

G'day, Max. Great video content as usual, and I'm so glad this project has come to an end for you. It's good that the cockups you made you kept up in the final edit, showing everyone that even seasoned engineers like us do make mistakes from time to time. Honesty is always the best policy, right cobber.😉 You probably won't remember the comment I left you on the first video of this machinists clamp building course of yours? In it, I told you I was surprised you did not own a set or two of these clamps, or if you did, then you never mentioned it or indeed have shown them in any of the videos I've watched so far. I also told you that in my first year as an apprentice, we were instructed to make a pair of those clamps. Well, Max, I was wrong. After checking my old note books from 1975 to 1980, it appears we made them in my third year, not my first. In year two, we made a pair of parallel vice clamps and some bespoke tools as part of the cariculam, which I would need later in the course. In my first year, we made a series of spanners and other simple useful tools needed throughout our 5 year apprenticeship, or 6, if you count my final degree year. What I also neglected to tell you was that to help pay my rent and other bills, I made a series of tools, mainly used by motor mechanics, that I sold for a handsome profit in my local pub of all places. A 100% profit to be exact considering (a), I used waste materials from the scrap bins around the workshop and (b) everything I made was during my classes or breaks.😂 Now the golden nugget. At a carboot sale last year, I came across a very old dirty toolbox that looked strange and beautiful at the same time, even though it was covered in grime. It was also very heavy not just because it was made out of different metals, brass, copper, and steel, but it contained a lot of loose stuff when I turned it over to check the underside. I was sure it was made in the 1940s or 1950s, but for £10 it was definitely worth it in my eyes. After a good clean, the craftsmanship that started to appear was fantastic. My enginering staff and I think it was either made as an apprentices project, perhaps for a degree, or it was made out of love by a father for his son. Another had a different, more plausible suggestion, which I'll get to in a moment. The level of detail of the engraving on the brass areas is something I have never seen before, never on work tools, not even online and something im sure no company would sell because of the man hours involved. It must have taken days to build such a box, then hours of engraving. My boxes did not start off life as a toolbox. For one thing, there are two small rectangular parts riveted on the back high up and to the sides. On each end, there is a brass handle that flips up, allowing the box to be carried with two hands. On the front is a keyhole. One of my engineers gets a gold star. He suggested it could have been used on a carriage as a safe in the days when horse and carriage were the only means of transport on land because of Highwaymen. He thought the box was a place for passengers to hide their money and jewellery out of sight under lock and key. At the time it was made, it probably would have cost someone more than a year or even two years wages to buy. It's not a profitable idea if you ask me. Far too much money for anyone but the rich to afford. How wrong I was. The seller, who ran a commercial building clearing business, told me he picked it up in a factory clearance, which was full of old lathes, drills, engineers tools, etc. That is where the red herring comes into effect. The toolbox is large in size and was very heavy at the time, but the seller could not describe its contents as it was locked. There was no damage to the lock outside, just cosmetic scratches. Hopefully, the same could be said for the locks' internal parts. The seller believed it probably contained rusty old spanners and screwdrivers, not worth a penny. No matter what the box contained, I was happy paying £10 for a lovely looking piece of engineering art and history, something the seller did not appreciate. When I got home and after cleaning off most of the crud, I got out 8 jam jars full of small padlock size keys, which I got from another carboot sale some years ago. This was in the hope I would find a match to the lock on the box. I had to know what the contents were. Curiosity was getting the better of me, and I did not want to end up like the cat. So, I spent two days, half a can of WD40, and a lot of patience tying to get inside. Finally, two days later, I managed to open the lock and take a peek, first peek, since 2002 when the factory closed down. Inside were 2 screwdrivers, a selection of spanners, 6 sets of parallel vices in three sizes, and 12 sets of engineering cantilever clamps of a similar design to yours, only they are more elaborate, sexy looking, and in four different sizes. There was also an array of different tools and items not known to me. There was a lot of crap of course, like washers nuts and bolts, and other useless things, not to mention a heap of chips. There were some things I never knew what they were or what they were used for. It's not a bad haul for £10 but it gets better because after cleaning the box with a degreasing agent and because I liked the box so much, I sent it off to a restoration company not far from me. That was 7 months ago. On Tuesday last, I received a telephone call to say my toolbox was ready. I collected it the following morning, and boy, was I surprised. Firstly, the box looked fantastic, which you would expect after a professional clean, but what I didn't expect was the delicate, intricate attention to detail and so much more of it than I first thought. That box was made out of love, I said, and not a project for a degree as first thought. I was wrong, again! I was wrong about everything. The company that charged me a lot of money to clean my box suggested I get a valuation purely for insurance purposes. I asked them why. All they would say is they thought my reasoning was wrong. They believed I had something far more and quite possibly rare than any old toolbox. At their advice, I took the box to a specialist in London, where I just happened to live, and they gave me the surprise of my life. The toolbox is not a toolbox after all and was not made in the 1930s or 1940s but much earlier. Their analysis showed that the materials were made around 1700 to 1750, going on the four high-quality materials used. Steel, bronze, brass, and copper. It was the zinc and copper quantities of the hindges that determined the type of brass used and its properties. The furniture, ie the handles and lock, these are made from bronze, not brass and the quality levels of tin that were used in making the bronze suggest a high characteristic of casting giving to a specific time period. The same was said for the brass and copper sheeting. That and the style of engraving used pinpointed the possible date frame. During the 1700s, sheet materials such as brass and steel did not exist. They were obtained by many hours of hammering and beating down on a single block of material on an anvil in a forge stretching it ith a simple hammer. It was not purchased in sheet form as you get today, but rather, it was made to order, to a specific order, and often would be inconsistent and expensive. Ordinarily, such a box is not worth that much, if only for scrap value, but this is no ordinary box. It is not even a toolbox but a strong box. According to the British museum, there are two types of strong boxes made at that time with slight differences. One type was used as my engineer friend suggested. To store valuables of paying passengers hidden underneath the carriage out of sight using a rod to secure it in place. This was the more common method used and most secure and less likelyto be found by robbers. Hanging the box on two hooks often resulted in it becoming lost as the carriage hit ruts and holes on the road or track, causing it to bump up and fall to the ground. The other type was identical but without the two rectangular parts. This was simply hidden inside the seats or inside the box at the rear of the carriage where sometimes a footman would stand. That type of box had larger rivets securing the bands similar looking to the bolts used on church doors. That is the reason for the lock and rectangular hooks on the back. A strong box, not a toolbox. It was also customary for wealthy families to have their trunks engraved usually at the front and on the top. This later extended to all five sides.This also includes strong boxes that would match their owners luggage trunks. To a serious collector, the auction house where I had it valued could fetch anything from £3,500 to the sky's the limit if two or more collectors were to bid against each other. For a small additional to my house contents insurance, I have insured the strong box for £7,000. I have no intention of selling the strong box nor its contents, which after soaking for three days in a rust remover came up looking great and in perfect working order. The clamps and vice sets show signs of use obviously, but they are not so old. Made sometime between 1940 and 1990 as there are slight differences in materials used and their design. Not bad for a Sunday morning wonder around a carboot and £10. See you next time.👍😁🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Nice video Max, I made a couple of sets of those, and I use them all the time. Great project for any skill level, cheers!

They look really solid for sure. I think it’s still well beyond my existing skill levels yet. Hitting my numbers on the lathe or mill is not a point I’ve yet reached even with DRO’s on both machines. My wood butcher phat Onkaparinga’s seem to overshoot every number I aim at. Basically I have passionate fingers, they Phuk everything they touch. 😜😂 I better keep practicing a while longer yet before tackling a project of this complexity. Really did enjoy this series all the same, lots of new setups and new techniques to stretch the grey matter. Also really looking forward to seeing you get on with the JFMT lathe as well. Keep up the great work & great content. 👍

Way cool clamp Max. As always nicely done. I have a bunch of that style clamp here and use them daily. I seem to remember making a similar clamp way back in 1979-80 time frame in school metal shop. But I have no idea what became of it. Oh well! Cheers

very good job friend Max

Hi Max, long coast to stop on the BP. 3 phase supply without VFD will allow you to use brake on BP, less painful. My Son made a similar clamp without milling machine at his high school metalwork class, quite an advanced project for student. I used it and worked well.

Always enjoy using that style of clamp. Got a few different sizes in my box. Nice project.

Great set of videos. Thanks

That design would be great for a knurling tool to hold one wheel on top and another wheel on bottom of the stock being knurled. "Artisan Makes" built a knurling tool that had wheels like this. The wheels clamped the stock instead of just pushing it away. With a couple of modifications, this clamp could be made into something similar.

Great Job Max

That fit and finish of the completed clamps… very nice! Top effort mate

Ta mate explanation cam work is amazing

Hi from Nacogdoches, Texas! Beautiful work.

Nice project, I didn’t know they had kits, I got one at a sale looked like it had spent its life in the bottom of the river, just to use as a pattern. Thanks

G'day Max looking forward to this installment

That was cool trick with sliding the scale to locate center 👍 Bang up job on the clamps, they look fantastic and appear to work just as well.. And shaper action... Yeah Nice build series Max...Cheers

Those are a thing of beauty. Lots of good tips in these 3 videos.Thank you for taking all the extra time to make the videos.

Max, super nice results. Thanks for all the tips. Cheers

Thanks for making it a good Friday!

Like the long format, short ones are good too. JFMT time next, happy camper! Enjoy the cool weather.

This is probabl'y the fourth video showing how to do these type of clamp (with slightly different dimensions, materials, etc). Every time, I say to myself, "I want to do some of those". Maybe this time? :)

Hey Max, Great show as always 😆😆😆

If you would quit worrying about the camera and pay attention to the job at hand you would make less mistakes. Thanks for your time. Pete in South Carolina USA 😊

G'day Max, great one as always my mate, that lapping lathe looks like an old south bend or clausing? Lovely old thing, any ways these turned out bloody great mate, thoroughly enjoyed this one 👍

Thank you Max!

Interesting section of the video displays a correction. Reading drawings & completing a part hold many tasks. Reviewing & correcting is working in the area of fabrication. With good interpretation a solution was found. Something that AI is inept at. But we are guided through Max's 3 D mind the best part of these videos. I truely wonder if a job card was created in written form the method given by technical draft would write all the procedures exactly. There is always the use of a rubber or do we rely on Max!

Max, just need to engrave them. 👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

That piece of swarf! I blinked. Another class job Max.

Very nice!

Sometime with Aluminium on the shaper get some 99-100% Isopropyl Alcohol. It works great on a mill to keep any galling at bay. Interested to see if it helps over oil/fluids.

Thanks for sharing 👍

Good job Max, I have the same clamp kit to play with,, just need a mill and shaper to do the job from the look of it,,, regards Frank

Haha, need an adapter in the shaper so you can use 5/16 tool blanks; less grinding!

Thank you Max for another great video really enjoyed it

Those Clamps came out nice.

Yay another awesome Max installment.

Hang on…..that lapping setup. Can you do a spot on that machine? I really like that!

👍

Great video. Did we see you make the central spacer pivot?

What looks suspiciously like an English 13a socket on the right of the mill is a long way from home.

Funny listening to your shaper say Danger Danger Danger Danger. Mine never does...

Part 1 was 47 minutes; Part 2 67 minutes; Part 3 49 minutes, total 169 minutes. We should add, say 30 minutes for the work done off camera. The total time is thus 3.2 hours. That makes them the world's most expensive clamps and something only a hobbyist who doesn't count and charge for his time would do. So Max is a hobbyist, despite occaisonally decrying hobbyists in his videos. They are nice clamps though - might come in handy in cases where the usual parallel machinist's clamps or G-clamps can't cut it, due to non-parallel surfaces on the job, or some other reason. I might make up something similar, with elbows on the block ends so as to reach inside spaces that a standard clamp can't reach. Wife to hobby machinist: "What are you doing in that shed all day?" Hobby machinist: "Making adapters and extras so I can use my machines more efficiently." Wife: "So, you are going to efficiently make something useful then?" HB: "Nah, can't. I'm too busy making adapters and extras."

The only problem is now they look to nice to use

Where do you get your small brushes for dabbing the cutting oil , I could do with a few of those .

Tally ho papers got a work out this week.

These clamps surely cost more than a new car..?!