Introduction: Corner Clamps

About: For several years with my daughter we have been building interesting appliances in a small garage, you can visit us and build something with us.

The clamps shown above are designed to hold the elements glued at an angle of 90 degrees. We often come to stick together different types of enclosures for our devices. Same carpentry clamps or clamps holding the elements from the outside unfortunately not always enough. We decided to make a set of corner clips that will help keep the corners straight when gluing the side walls of boxes and boxes.

An example of how to use Clams are shown in the second photograph.

Step 1: Designing

We designed our Clamp in Sketchup 2016.

Drawings along with the vector file SVG (for CNC milling machines) can be found in STEP 4. Dimensions of the side walls are 150x150 mm. To prevent gluing of the clamp to the glued elements, we made a corner cut at 45 degrees to create a place for the glue to emerge during clamping.
I mentioned SVG file for CNC milling machine. The file was exported from Sketchup using a plugin named FlightOverIdeas. The plugin allows you to export vector files with marked surfaces, which makes it very easy to work with a CNC milling machine.

Step 2: Preparation of Elements

The components of the kit consisting of four clamps were made on a CNC milling machine. We used plywood thickness 18mm for individual parts. Actually, they were small waste left over after another project, waste that has gained new live.

Nothing prevent you to make the elements manually using typical tools, ie saws and drills. The drawings we mentioned earlier also contain a dimensional drawing. Units are in mm.

Step 3: Finishing

Four Elements were cut. First, you need to roug an element by 120 grit sandpaper. Then finish with graduated paper 180 and 220. We gently roughened all the sharp edges remaining after cutting with a milling machine.

Prepared parts will be cover with dark hard wax oil.

Hard wax oil will be applied with a properly prepared cotton cloth. Actually, it's a simple tampon.
The Tampon is made up of several cosmetic flakes wrapped in cotton (our cotton slice comes from a torn T-shirt)

The flakes are wrapped in cotton and then crimped to form a resilient cushion.

Apply oiled oil evenly along the edge of the clamp.

Step 4: Job Done :)

After applying the first coat, let the clamps dry. Depending on the type of wood you have to apply two or three layers until you are satisfied with the end result.W

NOW - This is that moment when You should CLICK VOTE in the right top corner of your web site.

Little Edit: I add Sketchip file. It has been made in SketchUp 2016 so if you will open it you will need to have v2016 or 2017.

Woodworking Contest 2017

Participated in the
Woodworking Contest 2017