Anyone have a rivet squeezer I could borrow?
Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2020 12:26 pm
On my Charger project, I'm working on making the trim control wheel. It'll be years until I need it, but this is how it goes sometimes.
The plans call for a 1/4" thick disc of 2024 as the trim wheel, notched around the edges. But I look at that and think, that's way too heavy. So I come up with this clever plan to make a central disc of .063" 6061 (less corrosion risk than 2024), with two 1" donuts sandwiched on it with rivets, to make the disc nice and thick where you grab it, and lighter and thinner where you don't. I'm planning to use AN470A-3-5 rivets to hold together three thicknesses of .063" sheet, or a total of 3/16".
Now I have a plan, but I'm missing a critical tool: a rivet squeezer. I could try to make do with a universal head rivet anvil and a ball-peen hammer, but I already know that's going to go sideways 9 times out of 10. I won't need to do much riveting until a lot later in the project, years from now, when I'm working on the fuselage sheet metal.
Thus, the question: does anyone have a rivet squeezer I could borrow? I need to drive 8-12 rivets for this disc (haven't plotted out the exact number yet), but once I have the holes and the rivets, I won't have a good way to drive them.
The plans call for a 1/4" thick disc of 2024 as the trim wheel, notched around the edges. But I look at that and think, that's way too heavy. So I come up with this clever plan to make a central disc of .063" 6061 (less corrosion risk than 2024), with two 1" donuts sandwiched on it with rivets, to make the disc nice and thick where you grab it, and lighter and thinner where you don't. I'm planning to use AN470A-3-5 rivets to hold together three thicknesses of .063" sheet, or a total of 3/16".
Now I have a plan, but I'm missing a critical tool: a rivet squeezer. I could try to make do with a universal head rivet anvil and a ball-peen hammer, but I already know that's going to go sideways 9 times out of 10. I won't need to do much riveting until a lot later in the project, years from now, when I'm working on the fuselage sheet metal.
Thus, the question: does anyone have a rivet squeezer I could borrow? I need to drive 8-12 rivets for this disc (haven't plotted out the exact number yet), but once I have the holes and the rivets, I won't have a good way to drive them.