Official Luthiers Forum!

Being from Seattle probably makes me a candy butt and nothing here has offended me, so I guess we're good. Carry on.

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George :-)

Regardless you guys have fantastic sea food and the space needle and that bridge that gallops around before collapsing.... The first time I visited your very fine city many decades ago while traveling to Bangor to the Boomer base there I drove over that bridge and it looked strangely familiar... My contacts at the Navy base when I asked them told me it was the one in the famous video of the perfect storm of winds and a flexible design that didn't exploit the wind as it does now to keep things in place. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is what I am speaking of if this does not make sense.

Very cool city and I have been there many, many times since and always had a great time! I can understand why lots of folks like to retire in your town too.

Oh, I try...even though I chose the nylon/leather hybrid model of bags, which is I'm sure why they wear out over time, they still weigh about 20 lbs. when loaded up as I was trained to load bags years ago...e.g. I have about everything needed to do most things required by me with hand tools in my bags at any given moment...including around 2 lbs. of various types of screws...I was taught a well prepared carpenter is an appreciated carpenter and have found that to be fairly accurate...having to walk however far just to get a screwdriver you should have in your bags in lamer (as I was taught)...every now and again I empty out any unessential items when doing specialized things like hanging doors or simple casing of doors and windows...unfortunately it's not very often I get such tasks as I'm now kind of the lock out guy on the crew and have to deal with God knows what at any given moment

As far as this thread, what I now read into it is that StewMac tried to improve upon a standard Bessey clamp and apparently ran into some issues...the fact that they are prepared to rectify the situation says a lot...

My Jaws 2 came in last week. I thought the clamp was fine, but Home Depot is on the way home, so I stopped in to check out the Bessey clamp the other day. I was surprised by how much smoother it was, and for $10.88, why not?

I had my file out ready to go, but my handle is a little different than the handle in the original post. Rather than potentially destroying it trying to get the threaded rod out, I decided to just rotate it like a rotisserie spit along a 1" belt sander with a feather touch. The head was .3 to start and slipped in like a glove at .245". I'd give it a few rotations on the belt, then spin it in the jaws my dial calipers to check progress. It took no time at all, potentially 10 minutes from initially wondering how to get the rod out of the handle.

This is an easy an inexpensive mod if you have access to the clamp. Thanks to David Farmer for bringing it to my attention.

James - what size/model # Bessy clamp did you use?
I need a little project for this weekend.

This could be a good solution for smaller instruments as well, maybe move the press over to a smaller Bessie clamp. Hesh and Dave have one in their shop, it's a snub nose Jaws 2. Very useful for the first and last frets while in the soundhole area.

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I'm not sure what the model # is, but it was what Home Depot had in stock. 6". It has a plastic handle, and there was no visible pin holding the threaded rod in place. I'll check to see if it has a model number inscribed somewhere when I get home.

OK, the model numbers are inscribed along the bar. This one is a Bessey GSCC3.506


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Thank you

Hey James,
I'm glad you found a smoother clamp and probably a safer way to modify it too. Just be aware that even Bessey's are not necessarily Bessey's any more. Like so many manufacturers they have started slapping their name on some lower dollar stuff. Lot's of clamps can be made to work. In my experience, larger diameter unplated threads on the screw make the most difference.

If you are going to use the press on a variety of instruments, you will most likely need a couple of different reach clamps too, and as Brad mentioned, cutting back the nose(?)of the clamp, ( don't hurt me Link Van Cleave!) will let you press a fret right up to the neck block. I have a different home made press I use in small sound holes but even a small C-clamp could be modified to work with the jawsII press.


I'll mention another Modification that had an even more dramatic effect on my press.
The shoe had lot of play in the connection with the screw. The cumulative slop in the system often had the press leaning and therefore altering the curve of the caul.
In less than 10 minutes, I used a couple of feeler gauges to remove the play. I snipped them off at the end with the hole. It's as though they were made for the task! Now the press stands straight up. much better!