Clamps

 

I ordered some clamps from Fireball Tools that showed up yesterday. Fortunately, I saw the Fed Ex truck when it pulled up outside. Once again, rather than dropping the box off on the porch, he set it in front of the garage door where I could back over it like I did with the box of Christmas presents. And since it was precipitating some combination of rain and sleet, the box wasn't going to stay dry very long. Anyway, in this case no harm was done because I went out and brought the box in right away.

The box contained a set of Vise Grip style clamps and a hold-down clamp. The set of clamps was a very reasonably priced $54.00 for two 8" clamps and two 11" clamps. While I've got lots of clamps of all different sizes and descriptions, these have one of the jaws that come out almost straight allowing you to stick that jaw inside a piece of tubing and still be able to clamp something to the tube, for example. The grandson has a birthday coming up in about a week, so he'll get one of each of the sizes and I'll keep the other two.

The hold-down clamp is going to be used with the cast iron platen it's laying on in the photo. It's made to be used with a welding table that has 3/4" holes on a grid pattern to hold things in place for tack welding, etc. I'm going to drill a few holes with the mag drill in the platen to facilitate clamping parts down. I could have used it when I was making the gym sled recently, along with who knows how many other jobs over the years. 

The platen has a stud that appears to be pressed in you can see in the lower right hand of the photo. I'm going to pull that out of there, thread that hole and the one on the top right-hand corner. I'll get a piece of angle and drill a couple of holes in it that I can bolt down to the platen to facilitate clamping things. The platen has holes that are drilled and tapped along the long edges, maybe get another piece of angle drilled for those holes as well. The two angles bolted down will give me a right angle that I can clamp parts to if I need weld up a square corner. I should have done something like this years ago, but that's how I normally roll - always limping along instead of stopping and taking the time to make things go easier in the future. But now, I'll probably have everything just like I want it about the time I die. I imagine I'll still have a backlog of projects just the same, though. 

I've been diligently studying for my ham radio license upgrade. The test is tomorrow and I've been a little concerned with my progress judging by my results on the practice exams I've been taking. However, things have started to click and I think I stand a decent chance of passing it now. I'm going to spend a couple of hours both today and tomorrow studying. I'd like to know more about the material the test covers rather than just memorizing a bunch of the correct answers. The one study guide I read explains the material well, but just reading the book much of the information didn't sink in for me. I should look for some type of on-line class in the future and see if I can't learn a little more about what makes the radios and antennas actually work like they do. If I fail the test, that might just be the very next thing I do.