captainron55746
Registered User
Hibbing, Minnesota
I have to tell you that rivetting is a black art with more magic and wizard stuff than science and technology going on. It is a balancing act between the air pressure and the setting on the rivet gun, the size and weight of the bucking bar, the metallurgy and hardness of the rivets, the diameter and extension of the rivet, and which side you buck and drive from. There is definately a learning curve - I am glad they made me buy the rivets by the pound instead of the count I did plus 5. In the rivet kit we bought years ago, there came a bucking bar - looks like a little hammer, not sure what you would use that for but we tried it. We ended up with better results using a variety of steel rounds and squares we had on the shelf. You can see the bucking hammer on the big steel round.
We found that if you could have the rivet supported by your bucking bar against a solit object, you got better results. If the rivet extension was too long, it folded over instead of smooshing down. It seemed the flat head hammer in the gun worked better than the concave hammer. We never got a nice round head on the drive end that you would expect with the concave hammer and bucking the flat countersunk end.
Captain Ron 8)
We found that if you could have the rivet supported by your bucking bar against a solit object, you got better results. If the rivet extension was too long, it folded over instead of smooshing down. It seemed the flat head hammer in the gun worked better than the concave hammer. We never got a nice round head on the drive end that you would expect with the concave hammer and bucking the flat countersunk end.
Captain Ron 8)