annealing solid rivets?

Oh, yeah. But it makes the heads soft, too. Try it. You may prefer to work with them that way for your application.

Just keep in mind that cold rivets are *supposed* to get strength from having a cold-worked "factory" head (the one put on them by a cold-heading machine at the rivet-making plant) and a cold-worked "shop" head (the one you put on by peening the other end over). When you anneal your rivets, you lose much of that strength.

I often make rivets, in a pinch, from nails or wire. I make "factory" heads by means of a rivet set, which I have in about six sizes. If the wire is too hard to begin with, I anneal them.

The only problem I have with hard, un-annealed wire is that the shop heads crack up from overworking if the wire is too hard.

That should be enough. Try 800 deg. F as a starting point, if you have some way to measure it (a streak of Tempilstick will do it). If that isn't enough, move up to dull red.

Ed Huntress

If I might ask...

What do you build with rivets?

cold-heading

Mostly I repair garden tools. However, the fighting chair on my uncle's boat was framed in stainless steel that he fabricated, and which we riveted together 100% with rivets I made from stainless wire, 3/16" thick. That was around 150 rivets.

Why make it with rivets? Because we didn't have an electric welding rig, for starters, and welding stainless with O/A is a PITA.

I riveted together a set of wall sconces that I made years ago. And other little odds and ends around the shop that I mostly forget.

In aluminum, I've riveted up a cold-air box for my old racing Alfa Romeo and other bits and pieces for my cars, with homemade flush rivets.

Ed Huntress

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Very good point. Seems to me that you could help this by striking a few blows on the factory head with a ball-peen hammer, either before or after the rivet is set.

I don't think you'd approach the original strength. Much of it comes from drawing the wire. The cold-heading adds some to it, but how much it gets from each, I can only guess.

In any case, most steel rivet applications today don't require the greatest achievable strength. We don't use rivets much to build things out of structural steel that are going to be heavily loaded. Even there, they often used hot rivets in the old days, which were more or less annealed from the heating. You just have to design around the strength of the fasteners you have.

Ed Huntress

I don't know what he makes, but I know a lot of people who use them to make armor.

jk

My students are making a candle holder riveting 2 pieces of 1/8 band iron together. Strength isn't an issue. They are having a tough time with these plated rivets.

Anneal the suckers. I've held armor together with soft copper rivets. Worked nicely.

I'd venture that most of the jobs that hobbyist types use rivets for don't require a lot of strength. (Those of you making boilers for model steam locomotives excepted.)

--RC If I weren't interested in gardening and Ireland, I'd automatically killfile any messages mentioning 'bush' or 'Kerry'

My last rivets went on these

The people that really know rivets are the boilermakers. Think Steam Engines. Is there a steam engine service yard - tourist area - near you ? the engines have boilers that are locked together with long rivets.

Martin