Back sometime during the holidays I purchased a set of pipe clamp fixtures to use on the larger projects that I want to take on. They’d be perfect on this buffet project. I’ve never gotten around to getting the actual pipes until this weekend, and the reason I purchased these particular clamps was mainly because of their price - Let’s just say I should’ve known better…

The clamps call for a 3/4″ pipe with an O.D. of 1.0625 (that’s an outside diameter of no greater than 1 1/16″). So yesterday I picked up two 10′ sections that matched the exact specs, and were threaded at both ends, and had the guy at HD cut them in half for me. I figured 5′  lengths should suffice. I brought them home and proceeded to attached the fixtures. Turns out that the inside diameter of each of the clutch discs was exactly the same size as the pipe - not even remotely allowing them to fit over the pipes. I went back to Rockler’s website to see if I could find any information that might help me out and I happen to click on the ‘Reviews‘ tab - to my unpleasant surprise I come to find that just about everyone who’s purchased these silly things has had the exact same problem. Now mind you - these reviews didn’t exist when I bought these clamps - had I seen them back then, you can definitely be sure I wouldn’t have made the purchase.

I knew that the clutch rings needed to be grinded down just a hair, but didn’t really have anything that could do the job. I thought maybe something like a small grinding stone that you can get for one of those Dremel tools would work, so this afternoon I picked up both a small rotary file and grinding stone bit that I could use in my drill. Using the file to get the initial material off first first, then following it up with the grinding stone, worked like a charm. It took me about an hour to do though because there were 16 of them and there was a lot of grinding and checking for fit, grinding some more, and checking some more… After all that, I was finally able to attach the fixtures without any issue. I reversed the position of the clutches too, because they seemed to work better when inserted opposite the way they came packaged.

I don’t normally drink bottled water, but this afternoon I grabbed one out of the fridge to have with my lunch. The moment I picked it up, the bottle itself crumpled under the slight pressure of my fingers. In this bottle manufacturer’s probable goal to save some money by using thinner plastic they’ve failed to take into consideration my senses and the confidence I unconsciously have in a beverage container that it will be able to hold the half a liter of liquid inside of it.