Hey everybody, it’s that time of year again – it’s the Anarchist’s Gift Guide. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade now, people seem to like it, so I guess we’ll keep it up. Why? Unlike some other gift guides, ours isn’t sponsored. (In fact, if somebody asked us to write about their tool for the gift guide, our standard retort would be: “Why don’t you poop up your own butt?”) This is stuff we use and love. We have 11 offerings this year, and will publish one a day until we’re done. – Chris & Fitz
Baby Bessey Tradesman Clamps
We own dozens of the 6″ Bessey F-style clamps for our shop. These miniature clamps get into places that our big clamps can’t. They are especially ideal for tricky repairs where you need a lot of strength applied to a small place and at a weird angle.
We always bought our 4″ clamps from the home center or when our local woodworking supplier, Mueller, would put them on sale. They’re made in China and use zinc castings. They are OK, and I didn’t think there were other options available.
While teaching in Germany one summer I picked up one of the small Bessey clamps in the shop where I was working and was shocked to see it was German-made and was part of the company’s Tradesman line of clamps, which are the best.
This German clamp was considerably different than our Chinese-made Besseys. It had malleable iron jaws and could crank down with more pressure than the Chinese ones. Plus, the German version had two plastic pads instead of one.
I bought a bunch of these small Tradesman clamps in Germany and shipped them back to the States. You can do the same thing – Dictum carries them. They are also being sold by Rob Cosman in Canada, who has been trying to get Bessey to sell them in North America for a long time.
If you don’t have any small F-styles, you should definitely fix that deficiency. And the little Tradesman ones are the best. – CS
Sorry did I miss day 4?
I was wondering the same thing…