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Clamping up 4 sides of a cabinet, square and secure, can be a hassle. Good news! There are some reasonably priced tools that solve this dilemma.
Recently, DirtFarmerJay was building some closet fixtures for a friend. The material was melamine surfaced particleboard. Not the easier material to handle due to its weight and fragile surface edges, but what was needed for the job.
When it came time to build the cabinet boxes for the closet system, all four corners needed to be clamped up quickly, square and secure. For a small shop setting, this typically means the use of some type of corner squaring devices and a lot of clamps. For a person working alone, it becomes difficult to hold the pieces, squaring devices, and clamps all in position at one time (although we’ve seen some pretty clever ways to get around this!).
We recently found a series of products invented and distributed by Rockler®. Their Clamp-It system consists of different devices that can be combined to allow you to position and hold carcass pieces without assistance or “gymnastics.”
You can clamp at 90° corners or “tee” intersections. The work is raised ¾”/19 mm off the work table height when using the clamps, so it’s easy to raise the other ends of the work with standard “one-by” lumber. The corner clamping jigs, coupled with the matching assembly squares, are used on the work table, and the work is set into them, positioned, and secured.
The “top” edges of the carcass assembly are secured using Clamp-It® clips - which also work on 90° and “tee corners. At this point, if additional security is needed (for drilling for dowels, Confirmat® fasteners, etc.), bar or pipe clamps can also be applied.
We think the clamp system elements are fairly priced for the work that they do and the quality of construction. By the time you purchase the clamping jig, assembly square, and clip for each corner, you’ll have over $50 invested. That means that for a set of 4, you’ll have more than $200 in the system - approaching the cost of a good set of parallel clamps. You’ll need to make the determination if the type of work you do ongoing justifies the investment. We can tell you that these came in VERY handy in building cabinet components.
At the time of filming, here were the active links to these products:
www.rockler.com/clamp-it-asse... $20
www.rockler.com/rockler-clamp... available in ½”/13 mm and ¾”/19 mm sizes ($10)
www.rockler.com/rockler-clamp... ($30)
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