Old master carpenters have one very convenient universal tool that is worth reminding home woodworkers about. This fixture is called a weima (a wooden clamping jig). It is an indispensable helper when you need to glue frames, make a panel from boards, or assemble so-called case furniture from panels using glue.
The weima itself is extremely simple. It is usually a wooden bar or a thick batten: on one side there are many saw-cut grooves, and on the other, along its entire length, there is a longitudinal guide groove that runs under a fixed stop block mounted at the end. Along the guide moves a sliding stop block with a tongue for the groove and a metal stirrup frame made of rod no less than 3 mm in diameter. That is the whole design. To use it, you also need to prepare several wooden wedges. Depending on the upcoming work, you can make several such fixtures of the required sizes (the sizes are not indicated in the drawings).
1 — weima, 2 — wedges, 3 — slider (movable stop), 4 — stirrup clamp, 5 — protective pads, 6 — parts being jointed.
The principle of using a weima is clear enough from the examples shown in the illustrations. In essence, a weima is a close relative of a clamp: it is also needed when you must firmly compress (joint, as carpenters say) two parts being joined, or a whole row of them. For example, you need to glue two pieces of a bar. After applying glue and joining them, place them on the weima, press them against the fixed stop, and move the movable stop up close to them, then insert its stirrup into the corresponding groove. Now all that remains is to drive wedges under one of the stops — and a tight joint of the parts is ensured. In the same way, using two weimas, you can joint boards into a single panel, provide reliable clamping of panels when assembling furniture, and so on. To avoid damaging the parts being clamped, it is worth placing pads under the stops and wedges.
If you have to glue a large number of frames, it is better to make a cross-shaped weima, either demountable or one-piece, by combining two weimas into one — this will make the work much more convenient.
For the weima to serve reliably and for a long time, bars of hardwood are used for it.
“Modelist-Konstruktor” No. 8’97, A. NAZAROV
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