Lawrence Devers from Pittsburg, Kansas (my hometown) has recently patented a new hand-operated wood panel clamping tool. (U.S. Patent No. 6,726,192).
Wood panels for cabinet doors are typically constructed from a number of boards that are glued together edge-to-edge to form the complete panel. The panel may then be sanded or planed flat and milled out or routered to produce a design on the front face of the panel. Small cabinet-making shops typically lack a good way of forcing the boards into flat alignment with one another and holding them in such alignment while the panel is being squeezed from the sides by pipe clamps or the like until adhesive between edges of the boards sets up. Typically, cabinetmakers may have to use mallets to pound the boards into place while they adjust and readjust the pipe clamps at various locations along the length of the boards. It can be a slow, tedious, inexact, and sometimes frustrating procedure.
Devers’ invention may work to solve this problem.