When I built my mobile shop (FHB #70, Back Cover), I decided to enclose all of the hydraulic hoses in schedule-40 PVC pipe to protect them from UV-radiation and road kills. I ripped a saw kerf down the full length of the pipe, with the intention of opening the kerf to slip the pipe over the hoses. I cut the pipe to length, and I was smugly amused to see that out of a 10-ft. piece, I had only a 1-1/2-in. piece of scrap. I tossed the scrap, and it fell on precisely the spot where my foot was to land every 12th step for the rest of the day.
On this sweaty, bug-bitten afternoon, after finally realizing that it would take a full platoon of orangutans wielding pry bars to open the kerfed pipe wide enough to admit the hoses, I stepped on the scrap for the last time. I snatched it up to teach it a thing or two by snapping it into little pieces before stomping all of the power out of it the good old-fashioned way.
It didn’t take too long to realize that I had in my hands a good, cheap clamp. This theory was put to the test when I used dozens of the PVC pipe clamps to glue built-up edges on solid-surface countertops prior to routing their nosings. These pipe clamps work far better than spring clamps (or anything else that I’ve tried for this purpose) because they don’t tend to slide the work around on the slippery glue. You can vary their pressure by how wide you cut the pipe clamps. And you can put them on at an angle to the edge, as shown in the drawing, so that they exert even greater pressure from front to back.
Both 3-in. and 4-in. schedule-40 pipe work well for clamps. A note of caution: Wear eye protection when cutting the pipe with power tools. Razor-sharp slivers fly when this stuff is cut. Also, cut slowly. Cutting too fast can cause the pipe to spin, the blade to jam and the pipe to shatter. Cut rings from whole pipe first, then slot them individually with a handsaw or a jigsaw. They will pinch closed on power saws. Trust me.
Jim Chestnut, Fairfield, CT
Edited and Illustrated by Charles Miller
From Fine Homebuilding #102
