Official Luthiers Forum!

Is it safe to use clothes pins for clamping on my kerfing our do I have to by a crap ton of those kerfing clamps?

Wooden clothes pins work great. You will need to chisel away the jaws a bit to fit your linings & wrap an elastic band around the end to increase the clamping pressure.
There are lots of other options too. Spring clips for holding sheaves of paper are available from stationary suppliers. Cheap plastic mini spring clamps are often available in a box of 50... About 50 cents each last I bought some.
Check out some of the build threads. You'll see lots of different clamps being used.

I use un-hot-rodded clothespins,
with tightbond original glue,
and never had a problem.
I do squeeze the kerfed lining very tight with my fingers,
and hold for a bit, and work around the sides that way.

That is the same thing I do too.

I gave up using clothespins a while back and switched to Home Depot spring clamps, for no particular reason except I no longer have to replace the rubber bands around the pins when they rot. It really was not much of a problem. When I was at the A.S.I.A. Symposium a few weeks ago, I took the time to take a tour of the Martin factory. I was very surprised to see them still using clothespins for gluing kerfing. They work great.

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

I got me them Ryan clamps, the ones for the normal kerfing. They seem pretty nifty. I guess that's what you're trying to avoid doing, though, isn't it.

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Binder clips obtained from Staples. Foget how many in a box....?? Half a gross ,maybe.....but cheap and they work quite nice. Think Lance may have done a tutorial on using them.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I used all of the clamps mentioned short of the Ryan clamps. I Like Pegasus went with the spring clamps . When I used cloths pins I use a rubberband so the edge would be closed . There are so many methods out there and this is a case of using what you like , as long as the job gets done. Martin used a combination of cloths pins and spring clamps for years .
It is all good .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Thanks alot guys y'all rock!!

IMHO cloth pins may be fine for dreads, but for small guitars with tighter curves the pressure with an additional rubber band is far from being sufficient. Without mentioning cutaways. I like my linings to be gap free, everywhere.
Small spring clamps from HD work well, I modified them slightly by bending one jaw and lining it with 3/8" tubing to protect the linings. 1" spring clamps with cauls (pieces of kerfed lining) are substituted in recalcitrant areas, tiny 1" C-clamps for cutaways.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

i use a combo of clothes pins and the orange tipped home depot spring clamps.

i use the spring clamps at the ends and in the waist, anywhere where the kerfing has a tendency to get squirelly due to the radii. and clothes pins everywhere else.

b

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brendan 3.0 new and improved, with better interpersonal subroutines

Another question how many am I going to need? Right now
I'm working on a cutaway dread and a non cutaway.

If I were doing this initially and know what I know now , I would use the spring clamps. They are not overly strong and get to the tighter radii as Laurant stated above. I seldom use the cloths pins anymore and found the spring clamps more practical for getting the joint dead tight

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Here's my attempt. I got the clamps off the internet, I cut 1/4 surgical tubing in to short pieces and rolled them on.
They have about the same pressure as the clothespin method but they apply it a little more evenly