Toggle clamps and safety features

I've recently discovered toggle clamps. You can buy small ones for a fiver, either on ebay, or a spectacular array of clamps are available from Good Hand UK Limited. I haven't bought anything from the latter, I should add though.

I bought 4 very cheap ones on ebay, intending to do something better than my previous hold down clamps. I started by attacking one to some aluminium channel. The idea being that it would work like a hold down clamp: hold the back up, the middle down, and press down at the end. I thought the screw holes were M5, found they were M4, and then used M3 screws with a washer. The result was a bit of a bodge. Also, I should have spaced everything out a bit more, but there isn't really room for the result on the drill press.

So I re-purposed it to clamp work in place on the circular saw Jig:



It's quite primitive: You have to replace the screw with a longer one to clamp thicker work, but for repetitive cuts it's very convenient.

In my previous post about the circular saw jig I wanted to find a way to cut down on the aluminium chips flying around. After been hit on the face with a few my motivation increased sufficently to do something. I had a peice of 3mm clear acrylic lying around, so I cut it to size, screwed it in place with M3 counter sunk screws, and then cut a slot in it in place:
Of course it's a little had to see something transparent in the picture. The saw seems to do a good job cutting the acrylic, although you can smell it burning a little. Also, the plastic could have used some more support, so I suppose next I'll have to add a board in the middle section to do that. It's getting a little more complicated than I intended now, but I guess it's getting more useful, too.

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