Clamp Wall Project

What do you do about storing 250 diverse types of clamps used by 24 Furniture Design Program students? The Sam Beauford Woodshop was growing driving the need for more woodworking clamps. Our goal was to store all the needed clamps in as little space as possible, keep the storage system flexible and organize it so students would be able to quickly find their needed clamp. After a review of solutions used by others and brainstorming by the Sam Beauford staff, we decided to create a clamp wall because it would have a small footprint and we could utilize an open wall in the shop.

We were able to store at least 250 clamps in a floorspace of only sixteen square feet by going up the wall. Clamps can be stored up eight feet from the floor and still be reached by most people. The clamp wall took no usable space from the shop floor which was critical because there would be at least twelve students doing projects at the same time. First goal met, see Fig, 1.

Making the storage system flexible was important because we did not know what would be needed in the future and there was a wide variety of clamp types and sizes to be stored: parallel clamps, f-clamps, c-clamps, one-hand clamps, etc. Inspired by the French Cleat hanger, a system was developed where the hanging bracket would slip behind an upper rail then hook onto a lower rail, see Fig. 2. The upper rail prevents the hanger from falling out while the lower rail supports the hanger like a French Cleat. Hangers could be moved into any horizontal position and held in place without the use of fasteners and moved up or down to different rails as needed.

Finally, the system needed to show people where to hang a clamp so the next person needing it could easily locate the clamp. A shadow board would be perfect for this, but painting a shadow on the board would not work because the system needed to be flexible. The solution was to create black foam core templates of each type of clamp that could be moved with the hanger. The template shows where the clamp goes and how it should be hung. Placement was important because of the compact positioning of the clamps.

Once the concept was formed, a design needed to be worked out. I used SketchUp to create models of the various clamps on hand in the school then created a hand sketch of what the system should look like. A plywood mockup of the concept was made for tryout, then modifications were made until the system worked; meaning the hangers were held securely and moveable, see Fig. 4. The prototype was critical for developing the optimal distance between the upper and lower rails and finalizing the shape of the bracket. Originally, the hangers were six inches deep, but a strength test showed that the hanger would support at least 100 lbs.; we settled on eighteen inches deep.

Once the concept phase of the clamp storage project was complete, the final design was created in SketchUp then work began to build a wall. As with all designs, minor tweaks were made as the project was completed just in time for the delivery of two hundred new Bessey clamps. Our thanks go out to Adrian Steel and Bessey for helping make this project a reality. Just remember, you can never have too many clamps.