Warning: Woodpeckers Semble Clamps can Ruin Woodwork

[jasonrohrer]

First, I should say that I'm one of the world's biggest Woodpeckers fans.  I love Made in USA stuff, and absolutely everything that I've bought from them (up until now) has been of exceptional quality.  On the rare occasions when I needed customer support (like for a missing part, or a replacement part for something I had broken or lost), they always acted swiftly to help me.

This is the first time that I've found a major, show-stopping, work-ruining defect in any of their products.  But the way they have handled it has been really disappointing.

Quick summary:

The red rubber jaw pads on their Semble One-Handed clamps leach oily plasticizes which can soak into unfinished woodwork and ruin it.  In my case, I was clamping the faces of sanded but unfinished oak panels in the corner of a cabinet installation, and the pads left permanent stains on the wood.  I have tested 8 different Semble One-Handed clamps from two different shipment batches, and every single clamp has the same problem (jaw pads leaching oil).
https://www.woodpeck.com/semble-one-handed-bar-clamps.html

Pictures of the stains on the woodwork, and oil leached onto clamped paper, are attached below.  A video demonstrating the problem, and comparing them to other brands, is here: 

Woodpeckers has acknowledged the issue, and even reproduced it on their end with additional clamps from their warehouse.  And yes, I've even been in touch with the company president.  Aside from offering me a refund (which I appreciate), they have refused to temporarily stop selling the clamps, fix the manufacturing issue, issue a recall, offer to replace defective pads for other customers, or even warn other customers about the potential problem.

These clamps ruined my $500 oak cabinet.  But what happens if they ruin someone's $10,000 birdseye maple guitar?

So, I've decided to go public with the story and warn people.

More details:

This all started about 4 weeks ago.  I needed some additional clamps for a project, including some pump-trigger one-handed style clamps to use high overhead, and I discovered that all available trigger clamps were made in Mexico/China/Vietnam/Taiwan/etc.  Woodpeckers had vetted the Taiwanese-made Semble clamps, and claimed they were the best on the market.  Okay, I'll try them.

After clamping some large oak panels in a cabinetry installation (sanded but unfinished), I noticed some dark marks where the Semble One-Handed clamps had been.  Neither my Dubuque metal bar clamps, nor my Semble Parallel Jaw Clamps left similar marks.  Stranger still, all the Semble clamps used in the installation were brand new.

Online, people were talking about oil marks being left by "cheap rubber jaw pads" on Harbor Freight clamps.... could that be the problem?  I tested one of the Semble One-Handed clamps by clamping a piece of paper overnight.  Sure enough, a big oil stain was left on the paper by morning.  It looked like someone had left a french fry sitting on the paper.

I then tested the other 5 brand new Semble One-Handed clamps on paper, and saw exactly the same result.  Every clamp left an oil stain.

I contacted Woodpeckers and explained the issue.  They told me I could send the clamps back for free replacements.  But before I do that, couldn't they test the clamps on their end?  After all, if all 6 clamps have this problem, perhaps there's a more wide-spread manufacturing defect.

They initially told me that they couldn't test the clamps on their end, because:

I do not have ready access to the clamps as they are located about a mile away in our warehouse.  I would like to show the pictures to our buyer who brings these in from overseas.  We do not make them.

They wanted me to send pictures of the issue, which I did (attached).

[attachimg=1][attachimg=2][attachimg=3][attachimg=4]

After seeing the pictures, they offered to send replacement clamps, but still refused to test them on their end, saying:

We have shipped thousands of these without any issue.  Unless we start getting more complaints  I cannot justify testing every current clamp in inventory.  These clamps arrive in shipping containers.  Perhaps the issue will go away over time.  Try cleaning the pads with denatured alcohol  or you can try using wood scraps as spacers between the pads and the wood or a piece of tape over the pads.  I will issue a refund of $96.97 for your inconvenience.  Please allow 1 to 2 business days for processing.

I then suggested that they didn't have to test every clamp, but just a small, random sample.  They apparently did, reporting back:

The results are in after testing some random samples in inventory and we were unable to duplicate your experience with the clamp pads leaching out onto paper. Our owner has been informed of the situation and is aware of the test results.  I have refunded your original purchase for the inconvenience the issue caused.  If you want to try another set, I can send you one if you would like or perhaps you might want to try a different clamp I could send as a test.  Please let me know your thoughts.  Thank you

Wow, this was an absolutely baffling result.  How could all 6 clamps have displayed the exact same behavior, but none of the clamps in their warehouse did the same thing?  Was I going crazy?  Was the air in my house just "oily"?  I mean, I had tested every other clamp in my house, and none of them left oil marks on paper.  Only the Semble One-Handed clamps....

Instead of having them send me 6 replacements, I told them to send me 2 smaller clamps to test.

A few days later, the new clamps arrived.  I carefully unpacked one, without touching anything, and clamped it to a piece of paper for an hour.  Sure enough, there was a big, obvious oil stain on the paper.  Here's how they responded to this news:

I was informed that the new clamps you received left a mark just like the old clamp. I am sorry to hear that. This is certainly very puzzling.  I will let the buyer know.  The company that makes these also makes the same/similar clamps for a wide variety of other brands on the market.  We do not have any extra pads as these clamps ship as complete units with no extras.  The trial clamps were shipped free of charge and your original purchase has been refunded.  Please discard them if you wish or perhaps cover the pads with tape.  Thank you

Still, it was very strange that they couldn't reproduce this on their end with ANY of the clamps they sampled.  Did they not test the new clamp they sent me before sending it?  Were the clamps being damaged in shipping, like in a hot truck?  Were they testing them in a cold warehouse?  So I asked:

What's really surprising---to me---is that you didn't get the same result on your end.  To re-iterate what I did yesterday:

1.  Open the box from Woodpeckers

2.  Remove one clamp from the plastic bag that it came in.

3.  Open the jaws without touching the pads in any way.

4.  Clamp it very firmly on a piece of regular white office/copy paper (Staples brand, I think).

5.  Set a timer for 1 hour.

6.  Open jaws, see oil stain on paper.

Did you really do this same test on your end, with a brand new clamp from the warehouse, and NOT see an oil stain?  Also, when in doubt, the oil stains do get bigger the longer the clamp is there.  An overnight test would certainly show something.

And then they responded:

I am sorry that these did not work out in the end for you.  Thank you .

Welp... at this point... I guess they have just written me off.  But still.... what if someone else's woodwork got ruined in the future?  I responded:

Hmm....  that response is disappointing.

I'm still waiting to hear Woodpecker's action plan on this, going forward, to ensure that no one else's project is ruined by these defective clamps.

I'm not looking for a particular solution to my problem (buying clamps from someone else is easy enough), and you've already refunded me.  I'm looking to hear that you take serious problems with your product seriously.

It seems like your unwilling to really try reproducing the problem on your end, which is very troubling.

If it was my company, or a company that I worked for and believed in, I would be out in the warehouse testing dozens of clamps at random, trying to figure out what was going wrong.

I love your company.

Do the right thing, please.

At that point, I got no response back, so I wrote to the president directly, explaining the situation.  I include my full email here so that you can see my tone.  I wasn't being rude, etc.

Hello sir!

Let me start by saying that I'm a HUGE fan of Woodpeckers.  I've bought a dozen or so tools from you guys over the years, and I've really loved everything that you guys make.  I grew up in Ohio too.... my parents still live right off of Medina County Line, and my dad founded Rohrer Printing Corporation in Wadsworth, and I went to Walsh for high school in Cuyahoga falls.

This is something of a long story, as it's been going on for a few weeks now, but I'll try to keep it short.

I was looking for some one-handed trigger clamps, and everything at Home Depot was made in China.  After deep research, it seemed like there were no clamps like this made in USA anymore (JackClamp is no longer made).  Woodpeckers seemed like they had fully vetted these white-label Semble One Handed clamps, and at least they were made in Taiwan and not China.  Okay, I'll give them a try.  I bought six pairs in different lengths.

I first used these clamps about 2 weeks ago, when assembling some sanded but unfinished red oak panels.  These huge panels were over 8 feet long, and around 15 inches wide... 4-board glue-ups that I had been working on for about a week.  They were going in my master bedroom, and I was clamping them to some framing while screwing them into place.  I used many clamps for this process, but for the high clamps, above my head, I used two brand new Semble One Handed clamps, since they were the lightest (less chance of having one come loose and clunk me in the head).  These brand new Semble One Handed clamps had never been used on anything else.  For the lower parts of the clamp-up, I used Debuque aluminum bar clamps, and Semble Parallel Jaw clamps.

It took me about an hour to get everything in place and screw everything together.  When I removed the clamps, I noticed faint dark marks where the jaw pads of the Semble One Handed clamps had been.  What?  Did I clamp too hard and bruise the wood?  But the other clamps (metal-jawed Debuques and plastic-jawed Semble Parallel Jaw Clamps) left no marks, and those can clamp much harder than One Handed clamps.

I've clamped all sorts of unfinished wood over my career as a hobby woodworker, and I've never seen marks like this before.

Doing some research on marks left by clamps, I saw people talking about "cheap plasticizers oozing out of the pads on Harbor Freight clamps".  Uh oh...

So I tried clamping one of the Semble clamps to a piece of paper for an hour.... sure enough, it left an oil stain on the paper from the red rubber jaw pads.

Then I tried all 6 one-handed clamps, all brand new, and four of them never used for anything yet.  I wiped the jaws of each with a clean, dry paper towel, and then I clamped them each to a piece of printer/copier paper overnight.  Sure enough, by morning, all 6 pieces of paper had oil stains from the rubber jaws.

I also tested several other plastic-jawed clamps on paper (from Jorgensen, Iriwn, Besse, and Semble Parallel Jaw Clamps), and none of them left oil stains on paper.

I reached out to customer support about this, and a fellow named Chris N was handling the case.  He had never heard any other reports like this.  He offered me a refund, or to send me new clamps, etc.

But of course, since all 6 brand new clamps had this problem, replacement clamps, from the same batch, would likely have the same issue as well.  It seemed obvious to me that some kind of large-scale manufacturing defect was afoot, and that the manufacturer in Taiwan would have to change their process/formula and issue new pads.  And if an entire batch of clamps was affected, no more should be sold until the problem was resolved.  And any customers who already purchased clamps from that batch should be sent free replacement pads, once the problem had been corrected.

After all, you don't want to ruin someone else's woodworking project, right?  What if it hadn't just been red oak at my own house?  What if had been birds eye maple?  What if I was repairing a $10,000 antique guitar for a customer that they inherited from their grandfather?  Etc. Etc.

Even if no one is complaining (yet), that doesn't mean someone else won't be affected down the line.

I explained all this to Chris, and asked him to test the clamps with a piece of paper himself.  He initially told me he couldn't, because the warehouse was a mile away.

Chris asked me for photographs, showing the oil spots on the paper and on the wood.  I sent them.

When I continued to insist that some kind of test of the existing inventory should be done, he then said that they are all in a huge shipping container, making them impossible to test them all

I then suggested randomly pulling out a few clamps and testing them.  If every sample leaves stains, you know you have a problem.

A few days later, he reported back that they had tested the clamps on their end, and they didn't stain paper with oil.

I was floored by this news, and immediately started to question my own sanity.  How could all six of my clamps have stained paper, and none of the warehouse clamps have done the same thing?  Did the clamps get damaged by heat or cold during shipping?  Did some oil somehow get onto them at my house?  Did I just have very oily hands?  Of course, none of my other clamps, all stored side-by-side with the Semble clamps, and all touched by my hands, left oil marks on paper.  I even tried clamping a piece of paper to the wooden shelf where they were stored... no oil came off the shelf.

Chris offered to send me replacement clamps.  I suggested that he send me two small ones at first, so I can test those, so Woodpeckers can save on shipping.

The arrived yesterday.  I immediately opened the box, carefully unwrapped one clamp, carefully opened the jaws without touching them, and clamped them firmly to a clean sheet of printer/copier paper (Staples brand).  I set a timer for one hour.

Sure enough, after an hour, there was an oil stain on the paper.

I reported this to Chris, and asked what kind of test he had run before that didn't stain paper, and all he said was that he was sorry these clamps didn't work out for me.

As you can imagine, this interaction was disappointing.

Yes, manufacturing defects can happen.  It's not Woodpeckers fault, and I'm not expecting any kind of personal compensation.  I didn't even want a refund.

But I am expecting that Woodpeckers takes swift action, now that they have knowledge of this serious defect---a defect that has a strong potential of ruining someone else's work.

Some examples of things that would feel like swift action:

1)  The sale of these clamps should be suspended immediately while you guys investigate further, and then after you figure out what the problem is, arrangements should be made with the manufacturer to correct the problem.

2)  Proactive steps should be taken to alert existing customers who may have already purchased defective clamps (they should all be warned about the issue, cautioned to test their clamps before using on sensitive woodwork, and told that a fix is coming soon, etc.)

The way I see it, Woodpeckers vetted these clamps, and put their name behind them.  I bought them specifically because Woodpeckers had tested them and said they were the best clamps.  It turns out that these clamps weren't up to snuff after all.  Woodpeckers name is on the line here.

Chris N is now acting kinda like I'm just that one annoying customer who won't stop complaining....  and maybe this long email makes you feel the same way.  I'm sure customer support people get worn down by dealing with complaining customers all the time.  I'm sure most issues are usually the customer's fault in the end, due to end-user stupidity, and Chris N is just jaded.  But this is not one of those issues.

I don't make it a habit of emailing the presidents/founders of companies.

But if it was my company, I'd want to know.

Jason

And here's what he wrote back:

Jason,
Thanks for taking the time to communicate. Long story short, we tested a
sample of clamps from the most recent shipment in three different sizes
over a 24 hour period and were not able to duplicate the issue.
Personally, as a long time woodworker I wouldn't see edge marking as an
issue when I'm building furniture. Those edges rarely if ever end up in my
finished project. It isn't unusual for my clamps to leave other defects
along the edges that get removed by final ripping to width, routing and
sanding.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. The company that makes these clamps also
makes Bessey, eHoma and many other brands, all with the same materials. I
haven't heard of this from any of them yet. We also have not received this
complaint from any other customers.

So at this point I'd like to issue you a refund for whatever you spent on
these clamps and would greatly appreciate if you can ship them back at our
expense so we can try and reproduce the problem here.

Richard Hummel  |  President

At that point.... hmm....  then I realized I still had one more Semble One-Handed clamp, completely unopened.  I could test that clamp on paper and VIDEO the entire process.  And I might as well test other brand new clamps from other manufacturers at the same time.  Are they really made in the same factory using the same materials?

Here's the resulting video:



The Bessey One-handed clamps were made in China, so they're likely not made in the same factory as the Taiwanese Semble clamps.

Note that there were three clamps made in Taiwan in my test (Irwin, Wood River, and Semble), and all three left some amount of oil on the paper.  Maybe these are all made in the same factory?  But the Semble clamp was the worst by a long shot. The other Taiwanese clamps left a barely-perceptible amount of oil that I almost missed upon first inspection.

The Semble clamp left a very large spot of oil right in the center of the rubber pad.  It was impossible to miss.

And of course, there were several clamps that left no oil at all.  These were made in China, Vietnam, or Mexico.

I sent this video to Woodpeckers, and here is how they responded:

I watched your video and duplicated your test.  We saw faint staining on the paper on a couple of the clamps.  We do not believe this makes the clamps either unusable or defective.  I understand you are not satisfied with them, and I believe you should have received a credit for the clamps you purchased.  Again, we appreciate you taking the time to let us know your concerns.

So that's it....  they're not going to do anything to fix the problem, nor are they going to warn their existing (or future) customers.

Even saying, "Watch out, these pads might leach oil into woodwork" would be better than nothing!  They could email existing customers to warn them, and include a little printed paper slip with each new clamp sold.  But they're not even going to do that.

I told them I would take my story public, and they didn't respond.

So here's my story.

Hopefully this will save at least one other person from ruining unfinished woodwork with Woodpeckers Semble One-Handed Clamps.

The other upshot here is that I got to test lots of other clamps.  Seems like the Dewalt ones were the nicest in terms of build quality.  They left absolutely no oil on paper, and they're made in Mexico.

 

[jasonrohrer]

Well, I guess we can't link to YouTube videos here?

https  ://  youtu.be  /  6nLaFr2fdoY

 

[squall_line]

Well, I guess we can't link to YouTube videos here?

https  ://  youtu.be  /  6nLaFr2fdoY

You have to post the full link, not the shortened URL,to get the video to render in a web browser:

 

[ChuckM]

Thanks for taking the time to share your story.

When a customer was willing to spend that kind of effort on a problem they encountered and cared about, whether or the problem was isolated, some serious further digging than what what might already been done would be warranted. If the retailer didn't feel more should be done, perhaps the problem could be shared with the manufacturer so they could look into it and report back.

I have some spring clamps which pads would still leave marks after so many years.

 

[smorgasbord]

FWIW, I have a few sets of Jorgenson wooden handscrews that are decades old and still leave oil deposits on wood I clamp. I just chalked that up to the finish they used on the jaws.

I also have some dirt cheap Banggood single handed pump clamps, and yes, the rubber pads there also leave oil deposits. I just chalked that up to the cheap Chinese materials.

None of my various generation Bessey parallel K-Body clamps have ever left any deposits, nor my old Quick-Grip clamps, but I've sanded those pads multiple times as they've gotten coated and diritied and damaged over the years.

For the quick grip style of clamps being tested here, I wouldn't consider the oil a serious problem, but I would appreciate having it be noted in the instructions/accompanying materials.

 

[leakyroof]

I've seen this issue infrequently with Clamp pads, but it IS annoying. The only easy solution that I can recommend is putting a piece of Wax Paper between the pad and the material you're clamping.  Easier than trying to balance a scrap of wood, the clamp, and the project while tightening your clamps. With the Wax Paper, you can tape it to the project as well, just don't pick a tape that has its OWN adhesive issues on Raw or Finished Wood...