Leigh Hold Down Clamps — and the Amazon Alternatives
Leigh sells hold-downs direct for its own jigs. If you want general-purpose bench hold-downs today, the answer is a pair of holdfasts.
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Two different things get called a hold-down clamp, and it is worth separating them before you spend anything.
Leigh’s hold-down clamps are jig parts. They are the clamp bars and fingers that hold stock in a Leigh dovetail jig at the right position and pressure, and they are matched to specific jig models. Leigh — now part of the Lee Valley group — sells them direct through leightools.com, along with the rest of its spares. They are not stocked on Amazon in any reliable way, and there is no generic equivalent, because the geometry is specific to the jig. If your D4R or Super jig needs a replacement clamp, order it from Leigh and do not improvise.
The other kind of hold-down is a bench clamp: something that holds a workpiece flat to a benchtop so you can work on it. That is a general problem with good, cheap answers, and it is what the product scored on this page addresses.
The holdfast approach
A traditional holdfast is a steel shaft with a curved arm. Drop it into a 3/4 in dog hole, tap the top with a mallet, and friction against the hole locks it — hard. Tap the back of the shaft and it releases. There is no screw, no adjustment and nothing sticking up beside the work.
Once you are used to the rhythm, it is faster than any clamp with a thread on it, and the low profile means a router base or a hand plane passes straight over the clamped area.
Where holdfasts fail
They need a bench with 3/4 in dog holes and enough thickness for the shaft to jam against. In a thin top, or one made of MDF, there is not enough depth for friction to take hold and they simply slip. A torsion-box or MFT-style top with proper 20 mm or 3/4 in holes is fine; a 19 mm sheet of ply screwed to a frame is not.
The mallet action is also blunt. On a delicate part, or a piece aligned to a pencil line, the impact can move what you just set — a screw-adjusted bench clamp is gentler if that is the work you do.
What works
- A holdfast sets and releases with a tap of a mallet, which is faster than any screw clamp once you are used to it
- Nothing protrudes above the work, so a router base or a plane can pass right over the clamped area
- Two of them cost less than one decent F-clamp and hold in any 3/4 in dog hole, including an MFT-style top
What doesn't
- They only work in a bench with 3/4 in dog holes of the right depth, and in a thin top they will not grip at all
- Setting and releasing by mallet feels crude, and on a delicate workpiece the impact can shift the piece you just aligned
- They are not a substitute for Leigh's own jig clamps if what you actually need is to hold stock in a Leigh dovetail jig