Over at Toolsnob yesterday, Doug posted a review of the Rockwell JawStand. In the review, he pointed out that the clamping mechanism is slow to adjust, and that closing it from 1-1/2″ to 3/4″ requires nearly 20 turns of the adjustment knob. This slowness is actually something that we discovered as well, but neglected to point out in our recent review of the JawStand. At the time of the review, after seeing how many turns the knob requires to adjust the holding-width of the clamp, we came up with a quick workaround.
Simply take an A-type spring clamp, and clip it to one side of the knob, angled slightly away from the JawStand. From there, place one finger against the A-clamp and spin it to quickly rotate the adjustment knob in either direction. Since our review did not deal with materials of a wide range of thicknesses, the slowness of the adjustment knob and this workaround had slipped my mind.
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The clamping adjustment mechanism is built around what measures to be a special fine-threaded 1/4″ carriage bolt (could be M6, hard to tell). It should be fairly easy to purchase or fabricate a replacement speed-handle, or even modify the existing knob for a more elegant workaround. The two or so times we had to open or close the clamp a lot, the spring clamp-workaround was a quick and easy solution.
Rockwell JawStand via Woodcraft (currently ships for free)
Rockwell JawStand via Sears
JawStand via Amazon
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