VISES & CLAMPS

Stop wrapping duct tape around your vise, and protect delicate material the right way with this pair of hard-rubber, ribbed pads made to cover the jaws. The pads have (2) rare earth magnets embedded inside the rubber. Made for a 4" vise, they measure 4" long x 1-1/8" high x 3/8" thick with a lip along one long side. The rubber is 3/32" thick.

It's officially a watch-case holder, and indispensable for jewelers and watch collectors, but it's equally useful for holding anything small and squirrely while you work on it. A pair of 1-3/4" long x 15/16" tall brackets have (4) sets of (6) holes that take (4) movable posts. Spring-loaded jaws dial open to a max of 1".

Our smallest vise, and arguably our handiest around the house: call it the Jaws of Aluminum. Clamp this small table vise onto a surface up to 3/4" thick and let it be your third hand. The jaws are 1-1/2" wide and open to a maximum of 1-1/4".

What a cool little clamp! Only 8" long overall, the jaws open to 4" when you press the release button and close incrementally as you pull the trigger. The 3/4" x 7/8" pads on the metal-and-plastic tool won't mar the surfaces they're sandwiching. Makes you want to find something to clamp!

Devices used to hold spring in place, thus ensuring eternally promis-ing, but changeable and wet weather. No? How about this then: Steel grips, spring loaded to keep their tips tightly closed on whatever you chose to target. The handles and tips have been coated with a light plastic to improve grip and provide a bit of insulation. The clamp is about 4" long x 5/8" wide and opens about 1-1/4". They have strong grips and will crush fragile items, but do a good job of holding things while the glue dries, you do the soldering, or the materials bond.

Hemostats are the clamplike devices dangling from veins and arteries in melodramatic operating scenes. Our particular collection are Pakistani surgical-grade instruments made of magnetic stainless steel. As such we rate them pretty good, but not fantastic. Hemostats look like little pliers. The jaws are relatively fine, with rounded tips. The inside faces are lightly serrated to get a grip on tubing or body plumbing. And the handles are much longer than the jaws. Now the heavenly part. Great hobby clamps that can be worked into small areas. Fine heat sinks for electronics. Good hook extractors for trout fisherpeople. Excellent tubing clamps for flow-sensitive chemistry experiments. Sizes are approximate length.

No, not Beverly Hillbillies, just super-handy small plastic spring-loaded clamps, 3-1/2" long with 2" padded jaws. We'll pick (4) from our array of neon colors, but you can call them Jed, Granny, Elly May and Jethro if you want.

Clamps. Whatever. These measure approx 5" long x 1-1/2"' at their widest. They open to about 2", though, so they'll not only grab test tubes, they'll pluck cubes from an ice bucket. Or carry a few stems of asparagus. And you do get a pair, so you could always have a tong war.

Like a third hand in the electronics lab, this circuit-board rack from Elenco® has a pair of stable 6-1/2" legs and 3" tall arms with clips, one spring-loaded, to hold the board. It's a must for any electronics DIY-er. Adjusts from 0 to 9-3/8" apart and lets you rotate the board it holds a full 360 degrees. Both clips and legs lock with thumbscrews.

These small spring hose clamps are 5/8" dia when resting and 11/16" dia when squeezed to the max, which not coincidentally are the minimum/maximum ODs of the hoses they will clamp shut. We've all got something that needs pinching every now and then, don't we?

This double burette clamp has rubber-coated jaws that can grip a cylinder up to 1-1/2" dia. The adjustable jaws swing on a T-shaped lab-stand clamp for free horizontal movement. Not a chemist? These are perfect for metal sculptors creating fanciful crabs, lobsters and crayfish.

This white plastic U-shaped burette clamp is spring-loaded and has (2) different collets for the stand pole, 7-9mm and 10-12mm. Maximum pole diameter is 14mm. The spring-loaded burette side can open to approximately 30mm. Has a 123mm span over all.