My mom quilts a lot and my wife wanted some sound dampening for her home office. Zip zap, and I’m done! I will be replacing the bolts with wooden knobs.
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Nice application!
Thanks! Just waiting on wood spheres and I’ll laser cut a hex inlay and press them on short bolts. Just gotta make it friction fit.
I’m also going to see if can simplify by cutting the bottom hole instead of making an inlay for the tnut. Not sure if it will make the tnut protrude too much though.
I’m tempted to make the hex in the base and put the insert in the ball instead.
I would. But I think I would use threaded brass inserts instead of the T-nuts. Excess thread will then be hidden in the ball, not the wall. If you want to lock the hex bolt in really good, use black Hot Melt. Much stronger than the milky white stuff.
Yup! Ordered some inserts yesterday after thinking about it some more. As for the hex bolt, I’m using friction fit in the plywood. It’s much more than enough for the amount of torque exerted to hold quilts 
. Honestly it forbade even need the friction fit at all, but I like that it holds things in place, fewer lose pieces.
I made 5 variations of the quilt clamps, including one of which that’s concentric in design. A bit thicker, but it’s never crooked! Unlike the other 4 which have the insert in the knob though, the insert goes in the unit itself. It’s made for 3.2mm (1/8th) ply, but should work with 3mm.
SVG file: quilt clamp
Corel draw file: quilt clamp
I get the measurements as 80mmx120mm for one of the 4 clamp images. Is this correct? Material Thickness?
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Yup, the file is in mm and 80x120mm is the right size for a set of 4 pieces.
It’s made for 1/8th ply (3.2mm), but should work fine for 3mm.
The insert hole / hex assumes 1/4-20, but might need slight tweaks depending on the insert you are using. There’s quite a bit of play around the bolts so m6 should be a drop in replacement, but haven’t tested.
Great, 1/8" ply I have a bunch of. I take it you glue halves together to end up with only two pieces, right?
To be honest, I doubt I will ever do wall hangings, but I can think of other uses for these. Thanks for sharing!
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Yeah, generally speaking leveraged clamps like this are pretty useful in any DIY space!
Yup, 3 pieces make the base, the little trident fits in the back (glued) and serves as the pivot point / alignment for the top! Except for the circular one, that one has more base pieces depending on the insert height.
Got it, thanks!
Just FYI, I am currently uploading a tweaked version of the file. My wider fork on the half rounded square version didn’t work out nested. I fixed it.
Glad you are Beta testing it for me!
lol, well ufile.io was being terrible, so I had to change service, but it’s done.
I’ve been assembling a bunch. If using an insert in the ball (or a wing nut) to close the clamp, I’d recommend 1" bolts instead of 3/4. 3/4" was better when I had the insider inside the clamp and risked bottoming out and even then I used washers. With the insert in the ball / knob though, sometimes I have trouble properly engaging the threads because the insert isn’t threaded up to the edge.
Yes, I know about that. 
Lol, well I’m used to fancier inserts that are. I wasn’t too pleased when I realized they weren’t 
Have not seen any that were not partially recessed to allow for the insert inserting too…
Yeah
The T nuts work well when they’re in the base plate, but they’re too wide for the knob. The right most insert has a very smooth and short thread lead-in and is easy to use. The super cheap bag of inserts that I got in Amazon from the middle are better for the knob than the tnut, but still leave a bit of a flange and have cuts in the beginning of the threads from the hex slot and the bolts keep binding / cross threading in them. It’s not a huge deal, worth the hassle for the wall mounted ones that will get used every decade or so, but if I’m making any of these for the shop I’m absolutely just using wing nuts or some big pre made knob.
I could have ground the flange off, but for all the extra work and burning of my fingers, I’d just pay the extra 50c per insert and get the fancy ones next time.
I have used all three, and even still have some. I found using the inserts in MDF requires oversizing the hole to avoid splitting.