I have often run into a time when I want to clamp to a surface that is not well designed for it. I have some stamped saw horses I use that use a "U" channel for the horizontal beam. This makes clamping a pain. I used some rare earth magnets that I picked up on the cheap at Harbor Freight. You can use whatever you may have; damaged magnets, scratched magnets, magnets scrounged out of hard drives; whatever.
You can see the upside down "U" channel here:
I recess the magnets so they are just a hair below the surface. Since I will be clamping on the block I don't want to crush the magnets DAMHIKT (sorry for the poor pic):
The laminated block of ply was a larger blank. I drum-sanded it to the right thickness and then sliced it into four blocks. It fits the saw horses just right:
Now you can clamp away. Of course everything in your shop will be a different depth of cavity but, the blocks do not have to fit perfect, they just have to be thicker than the cavity is deep. I use them several places:
You can see the upside down "U" channel here:
I recess the magnets so they are just a hair below the surface. Since I will be clamping on the block I don't want to crush the magnets DAMHIKT (sorry for the poor pic):
The laminated block of ply was a larger blank. I drum-sanded it to the right thickness and then sliced it into four blocks. It fits the saw horses just right:
Now you can clamp away. Of course everything in your shop will be a different depth of cavity but, the blocks do not have to fit perfect, they just have to be thicker than the cavity is deep. I use them several places:
When I was young I sought the wisdom of the ages. Now it seems I've found the wiz-dumb of the age-ed.
