Clothespin clamps

While publishing a progress report on Gil Russel's spoked wheels development (see this post) I happened to notice that Gil has made a most useful development also of wooden miniature clothespins.

I couldn't resist this, and quickly made may own set (the original small clothespins came from IKEA, I believe). What you do in practice is to turn the spring backwards, by removing one part of the clamp, turn it around, and reinsert it. Then reiterate for the other half.

The new clamp is vastly improved by two new slots for the spring, 15 mm in from the new ends (which used to be the back part of the original clothespin). The slots are easily made by any small hand-saw. No new recess for the spring coil is necessary (which is lucky).

The new clamps are much better for clamping card details, since the clamping area is so much larger and flatter.

OK, so I've got to admit I am very red in my face. I did have some difficulties orienting the clothespin parts in order to make a clamp out of it, and once I got the hang of one way of doing it, I was so happy I didn't try any other way.

It is much easier to do it your way, Gil. Of course. No denying that.

But something good actually came out of my stupid mistake. Have a look at the comparison below. To the left is my mistake, and to the right the "right" way of doing it.

Note that my mistake actually produced a clamp which is excellent for clamping small card parts together, since the clamping areas are parallell even for thin paper parts.

The "right" way of doing it is much quicker and easier, but it doesn't work really well until you use it for exactly what you mentioned - sticks of a dimension of a few mm or so. Or, as in your case, for clamping spoked wheels in progress.

So now we can all have two kinds of converted clothespin clamps, for different purposes.

Not that I can boast of having thought it through this way, however...

Found out that there is a third way of making these clamps, which will eliminate the need for making two extra slots.

There is in fact already a notch which can be used to accomodate the coil part of the spring. If you are lazy, you don't have to do anything - just nudge the spring to place it into that notch.

If you want to go the extra mile (OK, a few feet then...), you can sort of enlarge the existing notch with a knife. The work and time involved is negligible, and it's well worth it.

You could still make new notches on the outside, but that is overkill in my view.

... and you could make the two small notches on the outside the same way, couldn't you - just turn the two clamp halves so that the outsides face each other inwards and drill a smaller hole.

Great idea - pity I've run out of clamps for the moment!

L.