Rivet setting

[Erich]

This is a little bit of esoterica. While setting rivets on my Ulster Rep, I noticed that the tails of the rivets on the chassis are rounded. My 3X power riveter came with a flat bucking bar which works well. But the works rivets on the chassis are rounded as if they were set with a dished set. How did the Works set rivets on the chassis? Did they use a dished set and did they set them hot or just annealed? If it was a dished set, does anyone have a source for a dished rivet set.

Erich in Mukilteo

[Duncan Grimmond]

I’d guess that they were set hot with round sets in a powered squeezer. A better job as the metal shrinks as it cools and gives a tighter grip.

[Stuart Giles]

I've always understood that the A7 chassis were hot rivetted. But the process is the same when riveting 'cold' in a production environment.

 

If you can't find suitable half round rivet snaps for setting rivets in the home shop, you can make them by hammering a suitable size ball bearing into the end of a length of red hot silver steel -I think this stuff is called 'Drill Rod' on your side of the pond.

[Nick Turley]

Hi Eric

I am sure that they were hot riveted at the works.
I had to re-rivet a lot of my chummy chassis rivets as they some had come loose due to the rear shockers being previously overtightened .
It seemed a pig of a job to me. Perhaps there is an easier way 
The way I did it was - first made a shaped anvil and a then shaped hammer that would fit my air hammer.
Fitted the rivet in position - heat rivet (white hot), hammer with air hammer, I reckoned that I had 1 .5 sec to close them, so one had to be very quick.

The finished result seemed to match the existing ones and they are super tight.
So although the result seems very good it was a performance !

[Bob Culver]

My father was a plumber in days of old and a great believer in cold rivets in spouting etc to deter cracking of the solder. Very small rivets but I have observed him hand set many. Some of the earliest rust reapirs on my RP were done with small rivets.
It seems surprising that the factory would go to all the trouble of hot rivetting in such small size. 
Presumably if to be done hot and not too many a snap made out of tough steel like an old crank or axle shaft as is would do. The shallow shaped hole could be drilled with a shaped drill.
Not prettty but soft steel rivets can be simply burred with a ball pein hammer. 
It is not easy for amateurs to get pieces of steel very red hot, and silver steel is expensive and very prone to cracking. Most old axe heads are through hardened steel. Can a depression be burrowed with a carbide drill and/or a Dremel?
For modern souls the rivet snap was a piece of steel about the size of a heavy hammer head. Alongside the round depression was a simple drilling used first to ensure the steel sheets were tightly together. 
I have used lengths of ht bolt etc to replace pivots in cheap compound hedge shears but the ht steel can only be slightly burred.

[Ian Williams]

I have done extensive solid riveting on both body and chassis, in my experience 3 x Rivet gun is not going to do anything but the small steel chassis rivets very well, it is designed for setting aluminium aircraft rivets but for the bigger rivets you need something more substantial. I have made button bucking bars for steel rivets with a ball nosed milling cutter, I have also made one for aluminium rivets utilising squeezer dies fitted into a suitable lump of steel. For chassis work and steel panels the rivets really need to be set hot, I have had good success using an oxy acetylene torch. I can not remember now what I showed of the process on my special body build thread, it was mostly of the aluminium riveting but there was a section on the chassis work that may be of help?

[dickie65]

Find an old film of shipyard workers riviting up a steel hull.
Its a scary process.

[Erich]

Hi All,

Thank you for the responses. Yes, Ian, the 3x riveter doesn't work on annealed steel rivets larger than 3/16. But for those, set at 76lbs on the 3x rivet gun, they set well. I guess I'm going to have to make a dished bucking bar if I have more to do. I was able to do a clean job with cold rivets to attach the inner body supports to the chassis, the ones either side of the g/b.

Erich in Mukilteo

[Duncan Grimmond]

I worked the forge for a blacksmith friend who was replacing iron (not steel) plates on the Turbinia in Newcastle. Heating 1/2 inch iron countersunk rivets up to bright orange, pass them up to him while my brother-in-law was holder-upper and the smith knocked them up. I have never been so hot and sweaty in my life before or since. The worst ones were in the bow which has a really sharp point but fortunately the deck was off at that stage or the gas kiln would have been below!