First, you can use small screws to hold things together, then after the glue has set you can remove them and plug the holes.

Expanding on this idea, I thought of using longer screws and putting them into scrap wood so that as the screws tightened the scrap wood would draw together like a clamp, but there would be no hole in the boat.

That idea rapidly evolved to where I would use 1/4 inch bolts, 3 to 4 inches long, and wing nuts, instead of screws.

Originally I( planned to use 6 inch long pieces of 1x2 or 1x3 pine furring strips, with a hole near the center for the bolt. As luck would have it, I couldn't find any scrap furring strips, but I had plenty of left-over 3/4 plywood. A few minutes with a power saw reduced that to many pieces about t2o inches wide and about 6 inches long. I used a drill press to put the holes in the centers of the blocks, but I could have done pairs of blocks with a hand drill. Since the bolts are 1/4 inch, the holes should be 5/16 or even 3/8.

As luck would have it, I couldn't find wingbolts, either, so I just used regular nuts, and tightened things up with a small wrench.

I had assumed that the clamps would pinch things together like heavy clothespins. They did, and that was all wrong. I needed the `jaws' of these clamps to be nearly parallel so that they could draw things together tighter. The problem was easily solved with some small blocks of scrap wood that were roughly the sze of the parts I wanted to clamp. The finla assembly looked like clamps in the shape of an {H} with the tightening bolt in the center, and the sides made of my scrap wood. The parts I wanted clamped went between the bottom legs of the H and a spacer block at the top. Tightening the bolt with a wrench drew every thing together very tightly, and cheaply.

The bolts were about 25 cents each, the nuts were 4 cents, and I put a washer under the side with the nut so I wouldn't tear up the wood as I turned the nut. The washers were another 2 cents each. I used carriage bolts, and they bit into the wood enough so that they did not spin. If I had machine bolts on hand I would have used them, with another washer under the head of the bolt. The hardware store cost was under 35 cents per clamp, and after using them I could always recycle the parts into other projects. In fact, I think the nuts and washers I used were already recycled from a different project--which was why I had them on hand.

I never regretted using regular nuts instead of wingnuts. I could spin them with a finger until the clamp was seated in position, and then with the wrench I could really get them good and tight.

I have seen plans for similar clamps, with one side a straight piece of wood, and the other cut in the shape of an `L'. These seem to bee good ideas, but slower to make.

Hope this helps someone.

Paul Jacobson