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Pop Rivetting woes


JeffR

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Well the sun has got his hat on so time to crack on with the 110 refurb. So out with the drill and riveter and off we go, heal board (not a typo - read on) is finally attached to the tub and beefed up, so got carried away with boxing the second row seat frames in to make a bit more out of sight storage. Going great till a rivet didn't set correctly, never mind, drills the head off and attacks it with a punch, not a good idea, bloody punch gets well and truly stuck, can't batter it loose from below so decides to snap the bugger off. Now why is it that a parallel punch will snap when you as much as look at it, normally. Yet try to break one and it's made of something harder and more flexible than a hard flexible thing?

Oh and when you put your spray gun away for the winter, make sure it's empty of paint cos chassis black don't come off.

Oh and by the way if, like me, you have a habit of partially setting rivets to hold things in place, don't kneel on the buggers, you may think that you are a fakir and can sleep on a bed of nails, but take my word , you bloody well can't. Took the best part of 5 minutes to extract one from just under my kneecap, you wouldn't think such a small hole would bleed as much...

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The only puncture I've had with my Disco was when some idiot :blush: didn't pick up all of the pop rivet nails and one got into the rear off-side tyre tread. Second point, one of the best toys I've purchased is a pneumatic pop rivet gun, it runs well of my little air compressor and is 100% better than a hand tool in pulling up the two panels to a really tight finish.

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Yep, knelt on pop rivets too, becomes especially painful on repeated application. E.g. when one is riveting the deck of a 'beaver tail' onto its frame.

By the way, another vote for an air-driven pop-rivet gun, a Chinese special on Ebay is likely to cost less then a decent brand hand tool, and likely produce a better finish. Certainly in my semi-skilled paws it does!

Matt

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Got one of those Chinese air riveters, it's identical to the ones sold under various brand names. One thing I would suggest is that as soon as you buy one you take it apart and replace all the "o" rings with something that ain't made of cheese, other than that the buggers are a god send (paid £15 for mine a year ago).

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You don't have them in the UK but here in Oz we have "huntsmen" spiders, bloody great hairy things that an grow to about 4" across from leg to leg. As a fully paid up ticket holding agoraphobic one real advantage of the air powered pop rivet gun is shooting the horrible person I'm not that keen on when they appear on the man shed wall. And I totally agree about the "O" rings, mine were total carp after about twenty pop rivets use, since changing them I've possibly used well over 100 pops without a problem .

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You don't have them in the UK but here in Oz we have "huntsmen" spiders, bloody great hairy things that an grow to about 4" across from leg to leg. As a fully paid up ticket holding agoraphobic one real advantage of the air powered pop rivet gun is shooting the horrible person I'm not that keen on when they appear on the man shed wall. And I totally agree about the "O" rings, mine were total carp after about twenty pop rivets use, since changing them I've possibly used well over 100 pops without a problem .

Got a fully grown huntsman (reputedly a Heteropoda maxima) in a jar of preservative that a mate smuggled legitimately (you Diggers get a bit squirrel about losing the odd individual beastie) brought back a few year back, it's a big bugger I'll grant you that! Mind you (I'm an entomologist by both inclination and profession) the critter that gives me a severe attack of both the heebee geebees and the screaming ab dabs are bloody earwigs (yes I know they are harmless, rather sweet little things but...), I think I'm just about the only entomologist in the world who was happy(ish) when the St Helena Giant earwig was declared extinct in the 90's, that bugger was 3.3 inches long.

sorry back on topic, I would love to know why Chinese o rings are always rubbish, it's a total pain having to swap em out, bet they buy them from Britpart...

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JeffR, we have them all, the Huntsman while relatively harmless is totally horrible, the Redback can give you a really nasty bite, (it's a relative of the Black Widow) the Golden Orb has been known to grow big enough to kill and consume a baby python, the barking spider will scare the poo out of you and the bite of the Sydney Funnel web will, if you don't get antivenin quick enough, kill you. Now, how many of these little horrors can we export to you ?

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As long as the buggers are dead... Once sent a load of British insects to Poland for a Polish colleague, only way we could get them through customs was in duty free Gin - he simply told Polish customs that the British like their Gin with insects in, same way the Mexicans put a worm in Tequila! Mind you I would love to see a live Tasmanian Giant crayfish, they look really cool .

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