Cheap Clamps!

After we got the EZ Skiff glued up last week, I went ahead and put the gunwales on over the weekend. In the process of doing so it became very clear that I didn't have enough clamps to clamp them in place while the epoxy cured.

I had seen in Ted Moores' Book "Kayaks You Can Build" a side bar about making clamps out of PVC pipe then recently when I was visiting with Mike Snook at Merry Wherry (Merrywherry.com)he was raving to me about the PVC pipe clamps he had just made and was using to install the gunwales on a rowing wherry he was making up. So instead of going down to the hardware store and dropping a small fortune on more clamps, I bought a 10' section of pipe and began cutting.

The clamps worked GREAT! I was just happy that they worked and that there were enough, my kids however went to the work of counting them and assuming their count is right (they are 11 & 8) I had 58 clamps and a about a 2' chunk of pipe left over so each clamp came in at under $0.10! Plus they won't gum up if you get epoxy on them and they won't rust if the kids leave them in the rain.

You can adjust the tension by cutting the slices thinner or thicker to get the stiffness you want. A little trial and error works well here. I used 2" conduit PVC but other diameters of pipe will work depending on how large a clamp opening you need.