Making Wooden Cam Clamps

Cam clamps or luthier clamps are used for holding small pieces where you don’t need much pressure such as small boxes, music instruments, very soft woods etc. I had lying around in my shop some 20 x 5 mm oak strips, bought from the big stores, at about 1.5 euro each. Probably you can spend way less by sawing your own strips at the table saw using a bigger piece of wood. From a single strip of 1 m long I have made a clamp with the clamping capacity of cca 80 x 230 mm. For the design, I gathered several plans from the web to see the common proportions, and scaled it in order to fit the 20 mm width of my strip, plus small adjustments. You can see the “state of the art“ drawing in this video by pausing it between minute 0:20 - 0:24. I wanted to be easy and quick to build, so the arm is made out of wood, instead of metal like most of these clamps. Anyway, in this case, at this length, the oak is holding very well. And the build of two clamps took me just two evenings of work. Not risking, I let the glue dry for 24 h before proceeding with the next step. • • List of all my tools: ■ Plans and Products I make on my store here ■ Follow my INSTAGRAM for insights and other projects: