Rolling in Revo's!!!

[Jim_WoodWarden]

Well it's like Bessey knew it was my birthday this month or something. The FedEx guy just knocked on the door a few hours ago and dropped them off so unpacking them was like my birthday had come a week early.

My initial impressions thus far. The Revo Jr. definitely appears to fit in the mid-range as intended. Since it is Saturday a woodworking buddy of mine, Jeff, was over and we were working on a project for him when the stuff arrived. He commented that the he would be most likely to gravitate to the Bessey Revo Jr's at their price point and would definitely pick them up if they had the same handle as the Reveo's. The red painted wood handle of both the UniKlamp (which is definitely too small of a handle at least in my hands it feels too small) and the Revo Jr. just feels a tad inadequate and cheap, especially with the thin sheet metal ferrule riveted to the handle.

While the bar and the clamp bodies of the Revo are beefier then the Revo Jr's the difference is not enough to matter and the clamp bodies are so light weight and the bar so thin on the UniKlamp that the Revo Jr. is definitely a nice step up from the UniKlamp and worth the extra greenbacks to get a Revo Jr. over a UniKlamp. I do feel like the Revo Jr.s seem more like my Bessey Tradesman clamps with the parallel faces added on. I also noticed the UniKlamp just had strictly plastic faces. While the Revo Jr and Revo had a metal plate reinforcing the inside the plastic clamp body on the face of the clamps, again though the Revo's was beefier and more solid looking metal brace in behind the face of the plastic clamp body, but not so much so that I would think the Revo Jr would still be up to the task of pretty much any clamping task.

I will do a couple of more quantitative testing in the days to come - I definitely want to check the different lines ability to maintain parallel faces with boards clamped at different height up the faces of the clamps. I am also checking to see if in the mechanical lab at work if any of our load cells are of the appropriate type for measuring clamping force in the right range for these clamps. If I can get one I want to check two things - one can the clamps get to their rated clamping force and two how much effort on the user's part does it take to reach that kind of clamping force. I asked the lab manager about it on Friday afternoon and he referred me to one of the mechanical engineers to check with so we shall see if the right range force sensor is available (I'm concerned that most are for much larger forces and given the kind of stuff we design is for large oil field projects). I'll also have other more subjective input as well on how I feel using them and such.

One piece of bad news. One of the Revo Jr. clamps arrived with a damaged clamp pad on the outside of the body at the head of the clamp. The box it arrived it showed no noticeable damage and I do not believe this tear in the plastic occurred during shipping so I surmise it is most likely it happened some where at the Bessey plant and was not noticed prior to shipping out. The plastic lip was laying down more flat to the clamp body but it did lift up as I removed it from the box so it may not have been all that noticeable at Bessey's manufacturing or while being packaged.

Well still I have to admit I am way surprised at what Dannette and Bessey chose to ship to us - I was expecting a couple of clamps to look at and test and this went way beyond my expectations. Given that sometimes my woodworking budget is tight I have tended more towards pipe clamps, F-style and Bessey's tradesmen clamps so I am excited to try out some parallel clamps and certainly appreciate the boost my clamp collection just got. Thanks Bessey and Happy Birthday to me!!

[Jim_WoodWarden]

OK I just had to come up with something this weekend to do in the shop to use the clamps on. This was pretty much going to be a down weekend for me and the July 4th weekend was going to be a busy shop weekend as I will be buying lumber and getting started on the summer guild build. There was something simple I had meant to do during my shop rearrangement/remodel with the addition of a new Woodwhisperer style lumber rack. I wanted to build a couple of small quickly built shelves between the studs of the lumber rack below the first tier of lumber and above the radial arm saw bench to give me some extra space for stuff I like close at hand. The only glue up was the front rabbeted 2x4 that was put on to hide the plywood edge and provide a bit of aesthetics with rounded over edges.

Ok so maybe I used a tad more clamps then needed but I made it a point to try and use at least a few of each model clamp. Here is the two shelves I built up on the studs of the lumber rack over my radial arm saw bench.

In using the clamps, I noticed the Revo had really nice movement and there was no struggle getting the moving jaw to slide on the bar. The UniKlamps were only slightly more difficult to get to move but they moved acceptably to me. The Revo Jr', however, were extremely difficult to get to slide at first. I sort of began to get the hang of pulling up on the handle to open the jaw and sort of pushing down on it to slide the moving jaw closed but it seemed more of a struggle then it should have been. My engineering mind is thinking there is some sort of tolerance fit issue going on in the slot in the jaw hardware that the bar slides through and the sort of serrated teeth in the bar. You could also kind of hear a difference in the sliding action of the jaws between the Revo and Revo Jr movement action - you could hear kind of a more friction sounding grinding noise on the Revo Jr's where it was a bit more of a smoother sliding noise on the Revo's. That sound to me seems to imply there is a bit more catching in the bar serrations going on when the clamp jaw is tilted for movement on the bar, but I am honestly not 100% positive why the movement is more difficult on the Jr's then the other two model of clamps.

I just saw someone else here post about putting wax on the bar - I will probably give that a shot and see if it improves the movement any without causing a problem with slippage of the jaw head when trying to clamp down. I have that problem of the moving head slipping on my Bessey tradesmen clamps if I don't seat the moving head in the proper orientation on the bar I will be tightening down and the clamp head is just sliding on the bar instead of applying clamping force - since the Jr's especially just seem to be tradesmen clamps with parallel jaw heads put on them I have been watching to see if the clamps have that tendency of the head slipping while tightening if it is not seated on the bar correctly and so far in the limited use I have used them I have not noticed that occurring.

I do have one sort of pleasant obstacle to deal with in my shop now. I need a good place to store my clamps. Since moving into our new house a few years ago my pipe clamps leaned up against the wall behind the old location of my radial arm saw bench. Since the lumber rack went up a couple of weekends ago the pipe clamps got new homes on utility hooks just over my plywood bin on the ends of arms of the lumber rack -

- and the F-style and Bessey tradesmen clamps live on the back end of the garage door track out of the way of the door when it is opened:

Well the Bessey Revo's and UniKlamps's are looking a tad uncomfortable lying on top of each other on top of a pile of wood in the lumber rack!!!!

All in all though storage problems of clamps is kind of a nice problem to have. I see a clamp rack project in my near future and I can give them all a comfortable place to live happily in my shop.

[Jim_WoodWarden]

Picking up the shop in preparation for the summer guild build I am starting this weekend, I was putting the UniKlamps and Revo's away off my bench. I had two of the UniKlamps out and both of them seemed like they were kidn of seized up in the open position. I finally got them to free up and slide closed but it was a little more of a struggle then I think it should have been. The Revo and Jr's closed up fine and to some degree I think I am getting the hang of how to get the Jr's to slide along the bar OK.

[woodcanuck]

I had two of the UniKlamps out and both of them seemed like they were kidn of seized up in the open position. I finally got them to free up and slide closed but it was a little more of a struggle then I think it should have been.

Same thing with me on the Uniklamps. I was using them on a glue-up and the last one to go on was kind of stuck and took some effort to wiggle loose again. I'm not sure why they bind up but the timing was not great...

In defense of the other clamps, I had zero trouble with the Revo and the Jr on this score...they are both working very smoothly.