Jet stepped up to the plate late in the game....

These clamps are rock solid and heavy. They seem drop proof so far as the red seems a mix of plastic and rubber. Clamping pressure is easy on the hands as they designed a wide diam. size hex grip much easier to twist then classic round grips. The dog system and framing blocks are very well made. They are the ultimate "one size fits all" clamping system. The dogs go into the the bottom of the clamps as well as a movable dog insert on the back of the clamp to allow perfect positioning on any dog hole pattern. Very well thought out high build quality...I plan to buy lots more...



update 9/13/06



AFter using these clamps for some time a few more thoughts. I have recently been testing the clamping pressure of all my make clamps and by far the jet clamps are the best of all the parallel clamps I own... I have most of them. The big handle with hex grip allows sufficient and fast clamping pressure vs. most other parallel clamps with thin round grips.



Update: Further testing with a pressure gauge has indicated many of my Jets are under performing in the pressure category. Wood Magazone did a very good article in the ~Aug 07 issue...if you are in the market for lots of parallel clamps i suggest reading the test results in this article. The Stanley's actually out performed all the clamps. More pressure = less clamps needed on a glue-up.



The only downside to these Jets are... they have not discounted the price :-) and they are quite heavy vs. any of the other clamps. So if you don't need a lot of clamping pressure the other less expensive clamps are easier to use if you constantly moving the clamps around the shop... yep they are that heavy :-) If your pretty strong it probably wouldn't bother ya much. But with that extra weight you get the biggest jaws made and the easiest clamps to apply pressure which often allows you to use less clamps....More detail ...

good tools great price

I am pretty happy with this set. I will be comparing this set to a 5 chisel set I previously purchased from Woodcraft at a sale price of $86 after tax original price was $130 + tax. The PSI set cost me under $50 with free shipping and no tax. The blades on the PSI chisels measure between 6.25 to 6.5 inches from ferrule to tip which is the same as the more expensive Woodcraft set. The Woodcraft set came with what I felt were clumsy overly large overly long and slippery handles that felt too light while the PSI handles are made with denser/harder/heavier wood that IMO handle better for more detailed work. The overall fit and finish of the PSI set is better except that the Woodcraft set is sharpened better. For some reason the edges of the PSI chisels that are supposed to be flat (not the ground cutting edges) round over near the tips of the new tools. Grinding/sharpening gets rid of the problem for good but that means you'll have to spend more time preparing the tools for use. This is the reason I gave it 4 stars out of 5. The PSI set also comes in an softwood/plywood case while the Woodcraft set came in a sad cardboard box. Funny enough the PSI case needed some fixing just as I had read from the other reviews here. It wasn't broken though there just wasn't enough glue applied to the lid and bottom of the case. A tiny bit of glue and some light clamping pressure fixed it up like new - a job that really should be a piece of cake for anyone. Amazon did a good job of packing it. The case is actually a nice touch. It's good enough to use on it's own but I keep all my tools in a large rolling chest with drawers. The tools will roll around even if your drawers are lined with the good tacky drawer liners so I unscrewed the hinges of the box removed the lid and placed the box in one of my shallow drawers. This saved me the trouble of having to make individual partitions for each chisel inside my drawers to keep them in place. The PSI set was overall better cost about 40% less and came with three extra chisels so I returned the more expensive set. I found all the tools included useful except I don't need two skew chisels of similar size so I plan on grinding the tip into a different shape when the need arises. The well known Sorby chisels are good but I couldn't justify spending $30-$40 for just one tool when an extra $10-$20 buys me eight of these.More detail ...