Frontline Engineering Frontline Clamps

The only True 4-Way Panel Clamps on the market, impossible to do without after using them! – I sometimes have some really wide timber panels I need to make, but I have always struggled to get a really good result from the usual array of sash clamps, long clamps, etc. The inherent problems with all these kinds of clamps is that they only apply pressure in one direction, and to get the pressure needed to ensure a good join, the clamps would always bow in the middle. This meant you needed to juggle a number of additional clamps to apply pressure on both faces, while trying to ensure all the boards were properly aligned, and then clamp the whole lot down to a solid surface to try and ensure it all remained flat!

Obviously this is not only very cumbersome and messy, but also extremely time consuming for what should be a simple job.

Fed up with traditional sash clamps, quite long ago I decided to upgrade to a set of Plano panel clamps, which were extremely expensive by my standard, but were advertised as being technically equivalent to 4-way clamps without actually fully stating it. The Plano clamps, unlike the superior Frontline Panel Clamps, gave more or less okay results on fairly light work, but I didn't enjoy using them, and was never as happy as I should have been with the results. For the money spent they are very lightweight, and quite finicky in use, and are not a true 4-way clamp. The pressure exerted on the faces is incidental to the side pressure applied, and I found it usually wasn't enough to cleanly align the boards in a glue-up resulting in the use of the mallet to line boards up, and sometimes additional clamps to ensure flatness right across the panel. On heavier and larger panels it just didn't do a satisfactory job at all I found.

Some time later I saw a forum post for an Australian product, Frontline Panel Clamps, a true 4-Way panel clamps system and promptly bought a set based on the highly positive reviews from forum members, they were a little more than the Plano but looked amazing.

These clamps are just the bee's knee's when it comes to panel clamps. They are without a doubt the easiest to use, and by far the most substantial, solidest and heaviest constructed clamps I've ever seen (just one of the bracket assemblies is heavier than a single entire Plano clamp set!), and make glue-ups an absolute breeze and completely bullet proof. They really are life changing when it comes to making panels of almost any size and thickness with perfect results every time with minimal effort. Each single clamp set (a top & bottom) weighs just under 13Kg!

In use, unlike all the other clamps on the market, the top and bottom clamps actually slide together using the ingenious angled inter-locking mechanism, exerting a tremendous amount of pressure on the faces which aligns the boards dead flat, before any side pressure has even been applied! This is the meaning of a true 4-way clamp. Once the sides have been clamped, the whole assembly is dead flat, and straight, and the clamps can exert something along the lines of 4 ton pressure, so you can really apply a massive amount of force!

They are made from a single piece of aircraft grade aluminium extrusion and are anodised, so glue is really easy to clean off (I also got the heavy duty nylon edge protectors to make clean-up even easier). The (hardened steel) metal assemblies used in the clamps vary from 5mm to 10mm thick in parts, which is orders of magnitude heavier and more solid than anything else on the market! The clamp end even has a heavy duty thrust bearing, and is a solid piece of 50mm diameter aluminium. Even the handle is made from Chrome-Vanadium!

Another brilliantly designed aspect of these clamps, is that you can use one half of the clamp as a traditional sash clamp, but without the bowing you would normally get!

I could not imagine doing any panel work without these clamps now, the sheer quality and more importantly the performance, is simply astounding, and full kudos to the inventor, every aspect has been very obviously and carefully thought out, to cater for all the requirements to get an optimal result for any wood working project!

Words just can't express how amazing and useful these clamps are, I don't think I've ever bought a tool so well built and thought out, just amazing, and an Australian product which is great!

No matter how thick or wide the material I've joined using Frontline clamps, they always end up perfectly flat, with no detectable bowing of the clamps whatsoever, despite applying a death crush to the timber!

Just couldn't be happier with them!