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Mother of rivet tools

Hi folks,

I must warn you, this is close to being a tool gloat. But with some unrelated crap that has happened over the last couple of days, I want to share my good fortune.

At the beginning of the month I tried to stick weld a lawnmower engine fan cowl. It's about 1 mm thick steel. I knew this was risky. I discovered that it's just about possible to weld 1 mm steel with 1.6 mm rods at 40 A and 80 V OCV. But if the weld was at all awkward, I couldn't make it work. And I screwed up the lap joint I needed to make between 1 mm and 2 mm sheet.

So I was left thinking about alternative solutions. I don't want to buy a MIG welder because of the cost of gas, wire and maintenance, etc. I started reading about brazing with twin carbon electrodes and a stick welder. This sounded good, until I realised that nobody who described the process said it was good. They just said things like "You can make it work". I figured I should read between the lines, so I didn't buy a carbon arc torch.

Then I considered rivet tools. Hot riveting was out. Too much trouble. I've got a fairly cheap pair of pop rivet pliers, but they'll only cope with 5 mm aluminium rivets, and I wanted something stronger. I had plans for 6.4 mm stainless rivets. About three years ago I considered buying a good pair of lazy tongs. The best pair I could find were made by Tucker but cost a fortune. All metal, weighing about 7 or 8 lbs, with a handle that always stays at the right angle. Seriously, I could have taken a cheap holiday for the cost. So I ogled them and left it at that.

Idly I took a look at lazy tongs rivet tools on eBay. And found a pair of Tucker lazy tongs, new old stock, with a few hours to go. I mailed the seller to check details like the model number and nosepiece size. He couldn't remember for sure, but the number he gave was close to the TT24 I wanted. So I placed a bid and won for what I thought was a reasonable £21.50:

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When the tool arrived, not only was it a TT24 in the original box with a

6.4 mm nosepiece, but the only signs that it wasn't brand new were the tiniest specks of rust on the pivot ends. No signs of use. Then I saw a Farnell label on the box. Farnell is the place where I originally ogled the tool. So I took the stock number and checked out the price on their website: £224.10 + tax. Woohoo. Score!

Alright, I should move on to the metalworking. Last weekend I hot worked two pieces of 3 mm steel to match the curvature of the fan cowl, clamped them in place and drilled through the sandwich, then riveted it together (which was satisfying). The idea of the backing plate is to spread the load and stop the 1 mm sheet failing around the rivets (the cowl had originally failed through fatigue around the bolt holes). Here are the pictures:

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Happy metalworking!

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy
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On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:36:10 +0000, Christopher Tidy wrote the following:

Looks like you had some fun.

Chris, why didn't you TIG that little beastie together? I learned how not to burn holes in tubing while making some metal shop storage brackets. And I just love the little purr the TIG makes when it's doing its thing.

-- Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable. -- John Patrick

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Two weeks ago, while yard saleing, I spotted a cable tie puller in a box of miscellaneous small items. I have had these before, but none that seemed to work well or hold up for long, this one looked like it should work so I held it up for a price. The owner suggested fifty cents so I paid and left. When I got home, I did a little research and came up with:

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Note the list price of $489.58 , a better deal even than my Fluke 77 for three bucks! Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

That looks like a nice riveter! I have a =93Big Daddy=94 riveter that I got used. It comes out every once in a while when I=92m replacing stuff inside a car door in the spots using large rivets.

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I=92ve been tempted by ads for pneumatic and hydraulic riveters, but I=92ve yet to try one and probably couldn=92t use it enough to justify owning one.

Reply to
Denis G.

FWIW, I used a housemate's carbon arc torch for brazing many years ago. I was able to make what I wanted to make. I didn't accquire an O/A torch until over a decade later, before any arc kit.

I guess!

Neatly done!

Reply to
Don Foreman

In lieu of a proper O/A setup, I have been considering a carbon arc torch for a while now. As I may likely have the need for one in the not-too distant future, I recently went on E-bay to see if I could find any.

While I was not able to find any currently at E-bay, I did find an "instructables" page which a fellow put together for his homemade carbon arc torch.

You can find the page easily enough through Google "instructables carbon arc torch", but there are a thousand word's worth of descriptions here:

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I'm guessing it should work for heating up metal, as long as I can cover more than a little area with it.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

Holy crap! I have that exact tool - got it for free in a box of garage sale leftovers. Maybe I should put it on ebay? Or in a safe deposit box?

Reply to
rangerssuck

We like gloats, even contact gloats. ;)

I'm not much of a welder but I would not like doing that. I tried stick welding a car fender back together enough that the head light box was pointing down a road after I hit a tree and put my cousin though the windscreen. I miss judged the gap between the two trees.

Mig is nice. I could weld your patch. Might be a series of spots welds with grinding but I'd get it done. I often stick 14 ga sheet metal together to make guards. I gotta learn how to use the tig welder we have at the plant.

Explain the parallelogram construction. Does that give some monstrous leverage?

A nice work man like repair.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

If the stem puller moves on the long axis 1/5 as far as the outer pivots on the black arms, and those outer pivots move forward 1/8 of the distance the handle moves, it seems obvious there should be at least a 40:1 mechanical advantage. The T110 listed at apparently has MA of 100:1 (15 kg operator force, 1500kg pulling force), so more analysis than the obvious stuff above would be needed to get an accurate figure in general.

Reply to
James Waldby

great buy

I stay away from all riveting tools because I am not sure what rivets I need for them.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus11285

No TIG welder. Just an oil-cooled AC stick welder, which I like because it works and doesn't need maintenance. And unless I'm mistaken, a TIG set would cost more than I can afford at the moment.

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

For that money, does the gun actually wrap the cable tie around the bundle for you? :-)

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

Interesting. Is it hard to direct the heat into a small or awkward area? The carbon arc torch I saw for sale looked huge. Also, can you judge the temperature OK from behind the tinted visor?

Thanks!

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

There were some brand new torches on eBay.co.uk a few weeks ago.

Thanks. I actually saw that page a few weeks back, but decided I wanted a tool instead of a project :-).

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

Hot riveting!

1899 steamship Robin restoration

Skip past the intro to about 2:30

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Reply to
cavelamb

I don't even bother trying to set SS over 1/8" with a manual tool. That calls for the pneumatic puller - and still takes two or three pulls.

Reply to
cavelamb

Think about it like this. The distance moved by the jaws that grip the rivet mandrel is fixed at about 3/8". But the distance moved by your hand gets greater the more links you add to the concertina mechanism. So more links results in a greater mechanical advantage.

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

Indeed. I'm thinking I might spend a little more and buy a complete set of nosepieces for the tool, to ensure I have them for future use.

You should try one. The great thing is that as long as you can drill holes accurately and clamp the material together, you can't really screw up a pop riveted joint. As long as you know you've got a pop rivet tool (as opposed to some other kind of rivet tool), just make sure the nosepiece is the smallest one that will fit the mandrel of the rivet. And if you want to set mild or stainless steel rivets, get a quality tool.

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

You have to push this tool twice to set a 1/4" SS rivet. Pushing the handle is surprisingly easy. Supporting the weight of the tool is harder!

Chris

Reply to
Christopher Tidy

On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 01:17:42 +0000, Christopher Tidy wrote the following:

It works, but not on things you need it for, eh?

Not if you beg/borrow/steal it from a friend/family/associate. Do your equipment rental agencies have welders for rent? Local school shop classes?

-- The most powerful factors in the world are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men of good will. -- J. Arthur Thomson

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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