After I got my new Exterior door for the lid of the bench I needed to enable some hold-downs.
Since the top is made from particle board 1.75" thick the compression type that cost $ 100 each would not work, I do not think. Therefore I came up with this idea.

These are made from a 1.25" oak dowel bought from Rockler. I drilled a .75" hole into the middle of the dowel. This was the hard part even using a metal drill press vice clamped to the drill press table. I just could not get the drill hole square because I have a crappy, cheap Sears and Roebuck tabletop press.
I bought 2 & 36" dowels for $20. This should be enough to fill the whole table.

These guys were then epoxied into 1.25" holes drill into the top.

I had some real crappy Chinese clamps. These dudes were not square and the threads did not line up with the bottom jaw. So I cut them off. I had some 0.75" dowels on hand. These I cut in half and epoxied each half to the bottom of each clamp stock. After some sanding I got a pretty good fit .
So far these seem to work just great even considering the quality of the clamp. Its basic faults do not matter in this situation.

—Madts.