Bar clamp and wedge edge clamping trick

When clamping trim to the edge of a large piece of plywood, quite often it's too far to the other side to clamp across the whole piece.

At this point, edge clamps are called for. Though it's rare that I find myself needing some sort of edge clamp, when I do need them, I need a lot of them. But I'm not interested in buying a lot of clamps that I would rarely use.

A common trick is to use a regular bar clamp as an edge clamp is to clamp the bar clamp near, and push a wedge between the bar of the clamp and the edge that needs clamping.

A wedge isn't entirely ideal though, because it has very little give or elasticity to it, and quite often, on taking the wedges out, I'd find that they have somehow gotten loose.

A better approach is to us a piece of wood at an angle, as shown at left, and push a block behind it. This has two advantages over a wedge.

  • It has some springiness to it, so it will stay tighter.
  • It provides pressure at two separate spots, sort of like doubling the number of clamps.
  • Bits of scrap wood can be used - no need to make wedges.



    Then again, a wedge is easier to apply, as I did in here in this video

    Many years later I actually bought one dedicated edge clamp.
    Surprisingly, these are not any more convenient to use than my edge clamping hack:

    Bessey edge clamp vs F-clamp and wedge hack
    Homemade vs. store bought edge clamps

    Back to the Shop tricks section