One of the old saws of woodworking is
that you can never have enough clamps. I will attest that this is
certainly true despite owning a fair number of them, relying mostly
on the inexpensive but powerful pipe clamps by Pony, Bessey, Harbor
Freight, etc. If you've done more than two glue-ups with these
you've already run across the issue of the tail end of the pipe
falling and the jaws bucking up off the workbench. This is not a
frustration, of course, when the clamp length is appropriate to
the width of the glue-up, but during multiple glue-ups one migrates
inevitably toward clamps too long for the job.
To control this little bucking bronco I
always put a long strip of wood about 7/8” thick underneath all the
ends of the hanging tails. This does the job nicely of keeping all
the pipe clamps level and in a single plane so the boards can be
laid in with no difficulty. I've thought of using pipe insulation
placed on the tail for the same purpose, but such insulation is not
thick enough. Too recently it occurred to me that your typical pool
noodle would provide exactly the right thickness to keep the tail
from falling. So now instead of a bunch of bucking broncos, we
corral a well broke line of Ponies. Hope this helps.
(The astute observer will observe that
the photos show a situation where the noodle was actually not needed,
but I was nonetheless eager to share the use of my other noodle.)
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