Clamping Together the Ends of Two Long Pieces

By Bruce Kieffer
Photos by Bruce Kieffer

Posted May 17, 2011

This trick is also great for clamping together all kinds of odd shaped hard-to-clamp joints, and useful a when you need a longer clamp than you have.

The Problem
Every so often we are all faced with a “how the heck do I clamp this” situation. I was recently building a very large boat shaped conference table with a solid wood edge where the long-side edging was two curved pieces with a butt joint in the middle. Darn now, that butt joint’s gonna be a bugger to clamp! I started by gluing one of the edging pieces to the center panel, and then I added the second edging piece. Here’s what I did to “pull home” the butt joint so it was tight.

The Tools
I made four 2-1/4” x 2-1/4” x 2-1/4” blocks and glued (yellow glue) 120 grit sandpaper to one face of each block. I also gathered up four medium duty bar clamps.

 

The Setup
I aligned and clamped two of the blocks (sandpaper against the wood) to the end of edging piece that was already glued to the tabletop’s panel, and I clamped the other two blocks to the end of the loose edging piece.

 

The Solution
I applied glue to the ends of both pieces, added bar clamps horizontally across the blocks, and applied equal pressure to pull the joint together tightly. Of course in my case, I also glued and clamped the long edge to the tabletop’s panel at the same time. That’s it! I hope you find many uses for this trick.