Four stars because I haven’t seen every handle out there, some may be even better

Kind of a hybrid “review” here.

So, I was doing a de-clamping of a project that used a bunch of parallel jaw clamps. My usual procedure is to remove a clamp, then lean it against the saw as I hold up the project and work the next clamp.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the leaning clamp start to slide and fall over (happens all the time for me).

Later in the day while clamping up the next glue up, I reached for that clamp and realized it had no handle! 8^/

This was a Jet brand parallel jaw clamp I had bought several years ago. Compared to my early generation Bessy’s, the Jets are an improvement in many ways.

The bars are bigger, less flexing.
The handles are much larger and easier to grip.
A head lock which is handy when clamping vertically.
They are a few inches longer that the Bessys in each size group, seems I’m always running about 1” short of clamp capacity with the Bessys and need to grab a longer one. The Jets have that extra inch.

Negative thing about the Jets is they are clunky and crude compared to the operation of the Bessys, but the end function of clamping is quite good.

Anyway, back to the handle.

The plastic handle had snapped off.

To the object of review:
I have no lathe so making a new one quickly wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time dealing with this.
Looking for a replacement I found a large “Nicholson” branded ”#00” handle that seemed like it was about the right size.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001T4KQJ6

$7 delivered.

My clamp shaft is 0.540” and this handle came in about 0.1” under. To keep the hole centered I gradually increased the drill bit side so each drill pass would stay centered in the hole.

Since I had no bit to get the last 0.040 past the 1/2”, I chucked up a router bit and “yazed” it around to get a snug fit to the clamp shaft.

The shaft has a flat and I intended to take a slice off a 1/2” dowel and epoxy it into the handle, but the slice would have been really thin so I just thought fuggit, I’ll just epoxy the thing and let that fill the small gap.

I marked the shaft to index where the pin hole was and carefully measured and market the ferrule so when installed I could drill for the pin and actually hit the hole.

When ever I disassemble some machinery/electronic junk before trashing it, I’ll salvage “useful” parts. Shafting is one item I hoard so I have a good selection. A piece just slightly bigger than the shaft pin hole was found.

With the replacement handle hole filled with a goodly amount of epoxy, I pressed the handle onto the shaft and then let it sit so the epoxy would flow internally down around the shaft and flat (no leaks!)

After thickening up a bit, I used a small drill to find the pin hole, then enalrged it to the proper size for my new pin.

Some bashing on the vises “anvil” peened over the pin and I didn’t even smack my thumb!

So basically this new handle was a good, inexpensive and quick repair.