Bessey Revo K-Body Clamps

The clamps are excellent, but the plastic facing on the hand-screw portion of the clamp seems fragile. It can break during shipping, as others have noted. I would inspect the clamp in the store before buying. I have a number of Bessey clamps of various sizes. A feature I like very much is the extender which allows two clamps to be joined to make an even longer clamp, which I find useful for large cabinets. The K-P Blocks allow four clamps to be arranged, much like tic-tac-toe, to clamp a rectangular object, like edge banding on a door. The positions of the clamps are easy to adjust, and the blocks hold the clamps in place, while keeping the object flat. This greatly simplifies the clamping operation.

I would agree that these clamps are great for clamping. However, the black plastic parts such as the snap on rail supports, and the rail end stops are very fragile and break easily. I have a dozen or more of these in various sizes and sometimes they fall over in the shop, or get accidentally get pushed off the bench and these parts always break. It would be nice if they were made out of some less breakable material.

Great clamps.

These clamps take too long to engage. Twist, twist, twist, twist, still nothing. You have to press the handle toward the bar while twisting to engage the clamp. Also, nothing locks the clamp head in position. It will occasionally slide down the bar, and slam into the other end. Nice large clamping surface, but I like Jet parallel clamps better. Bessey H style pipe clamps are good too.

They are not Jets. They are not Irwins - they are in between. I have no complaints about performance in clamping - they do so parallel and with plenty of force. They are easier to tighten than Irwins (which are my clamps of last resort). The major annoyance is that that the bar slides back and forth through the lower chamber whenever the clamp is not engaged. This makes vertical storage trickier and makes using them inconvenient and annoying - neither of which are good things during a glue up. I plan to stick with Jet clamps in all future purchasing - maybe if these go on a big sale.  I will get them again. Irwin parallel clamps can't be cheap enough - not worth the space they take for storage.

The Revo-K model of clamp has a thin flange around the edges of the plastic face on both clamp heads. The flanges are very fragile. I ordered two clamps. One arrived with the fixed-base flange broken on one side. Rockler's great customer service associate immediately shipped a replacement which arrived with the fixed-base flange broken on both bottom corners and the top side! From the damage to my clamps during shipment, I surmise that the clamp flanges would break easily if you should drop or bang one in your shop. I bought these because of the Bessey reputation and the excellent project results obtained by using my old-style Besseys. I have not used the undamaged clamp yet, but you can bet that I will be careful with them when I eventually get to use them.