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2.5-inch Plastic Spring Clamps

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

Overview

We build models.  That invariably means that at some point we will need to hold two parts together while glue dries.  Over the years I have used a wide variety of items to achieve this, from the ubiquitous rubber band and tape to the more obscure wire twist ties and books (yes, books; in gluing a wing together I stacked books on top of it.  Hey, it worked...).  While all of those worked for the most part, I have always been on the lookout for a set of dedicated hobby clamps.  Perusing the local hardware store revealed quite a few excellent looking clamps, but they were always too large or had too much compression.  So my search continued.

Enter the Widget

Not too long ago I thought to search online for small clamps, and I came across quite a few hits.  One in particular caught my eye, a company called Widget Supply.  With a name like that, how could I not click on the link?  The product they had in their catalog was a clear tube of 2.5-inch plastic spring clamps, for under $20.  One hundred of them.  For twenty dollars.  That works out to five cents a clamp!  And the photo looked like these weren't cheap clamps, either, but solid plastic with steel springs and moveable jaws.  Well, for $20, I couldn't pass it up, so out came the card and the order went in.

Two days later, they were sitting on the doorstep.  Sure enough, the description was accurate: contained in the large tube were 100 five cent clamps.  In my sample I had 30 yellow, 30 blue, and 10 each of the other colors (black, green, red, and pink).  Each clamp has separate moveable orange jaws that have a waffle-type face.  This face is not interlocking with the opposing side, so there is no risk of bending up thin pieces.  The face is designed to have a center hole, both vertically and horizontally, which will help hold round objects.  The jaw pressure is firm, but not so much so as to distort or break a kit piece.  Did I mention there were a hundred of these?  Basically, with this one tube, I can clamp together a dozen kits and still have clamps left over.

The clamps also have holes drilled into the handles, so you can use these to hold parts to paint, and then hook them up somewhere out of the way to dry (hooks not included).  The jaws open to about an inch at full width, which is frustratingly short of fitting around a bottle of paint.  I say frustratingly because on the inner jaw face are teeth, which could have made these excellent little bottle openers.  Ahh well, you can't have everything, and for a twenty cent clamp, these will be worth far more than their purchase price.

Conclusion

If you need some clamps, this one is a no-brainer.  Twenty bucks, heck, that's less than the price of most models these days, and for those who balk at even that price, find a couple modelers to go in on it together.  Even split between four modelers means a pile of 25 clamps, which is plenty for just about any project.  I will definitely be  perusing the Widget Supply site some more to see what other kinds of useful gadgetry I might find.