Buckin' bars!!

What are the general recommendations for bucking bars? I have a nice anvil/footed bucking bar from cleaveland. Got a basic bar from US tool (their quality is not very good). I am wondering...outside of a tungsten bar, what is a good recommendation for shape of bucking bars? Thanks.

Don't dismiss a tungston bucking bar. Yes, they are expensive. Yes, they are worth it.

spend the money on a tungsten bar

I bought a couple of cheapo bucking bars at Harbor Freight. Haven't ever used them. The tungsten bar I got with my toolkit from Avery has been so easy to use (small and HEAVY) I've never had to pick up the other bars.

Head to your friendly metal store and pick out a chunk of 1-1/4" keystock or cold rolled. Most places have drops. You can fashion any shape you need with a small chop saw. The store bought bars are just to whimpy. The tungsten bar I had a chance to try was ok but not worth the $$$ in my opinion.

A tungsten bar is NOT an option. Coming from from someone who has shot hundreds of thousands of rivets take my word for it!

I only have one tungsten bar and used it for 99% of the rivets on my plane. If I build another RV I will find another tungsten bar to do the remaining 1% of the rivets.

FrankK90989 said:

Head to your friendly metal store and pick out a chunk of 1-1/4" keystock or cold rolled. Most places have drops. You can fashion any shape you need with a small chop saw. The store bought bars are just to whimpy. The tungsten bar I had a chance to try was ok but not worth the $$$ in my opinion.

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That is how I got my favorite bucking bar. It is just a 2 X 6 X .75 bar of steel that I smoothed and polished. I think it cost me $1.50.

Tungsten!

I've got a toolbox drawer full of steel bucking bars - rarely use any of them since I got the little tungsten bar a couple of years ago. Best money I ever spent! The little bar works for 99.9% of all the rivets.

Dan Langhout said:

I've got a toolbox drawer full of steel bucking bars - rarely use any of them since I got the little tungsten bar a couple of years ago. Best money I ever spent! The little bar works for 99.9% of all the rivets.

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...could not agree more!

READ!

Just read the original question.
"outside of a tungsten bar, what is a good recommendation for shape of bucking bars? Thanks."

apkp777 said:

A tungsten bar is NOT an option. Coming from from someone who has shot hundreds of thousands of rivets take my word for it!

I only have one tungsten bar and used it for 99% of the rivets on my plane. If I build another RV I will find another tungsten bar to do the remaining 1% of the rivets.

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Dan Langhout said:

I've got a toolbox drawer full of steel bucking bars - rarely use any of them since I got the little tungsten bar a couple of years ago. Best money I ever spent! The little bar works for 99.9% of all the rivets.

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RV7Ron said:

...could not agree more!

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aarvig said:

What are the general recommendations for bucking bars? I have a nice anvil/footed bucking bar from cleaveland. Got a basic bar from US tool (their quality is not very good). I am wondering...outside of a tungsten bar, what is a good recommendation for shape of bucking bars? Thanks.

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Let me see if I can answer your *actual* question, instead of the one you didn't ask...

*Other than the tungsten bar*, there are a few odd shapes that very occasionally come in handy...long, thin, flat extensions on a heavy bar may help get rivets in tight little spaces; "pointed" ends may also help sometimes. 99% of the rivets can be shot with just a hung of metal that comfortably fits in your hand (hence, the tungsten bar, because it's smaller and can be used in many more places, and is much more comfortable to hold), but there are a few locations that need odd sizes/shapes.

Tungsten, Tungsten, Tungsten....

There are two types of bucking bars. Tungsten, and everything else. Everythng else is completely inferior.

After you buck your first rivet with a Tungsten, you will understand, and never let it go.

in answer to your question

Other than the tungsten bar, a bar that I got from Avery, a rectangular block, with one end angled, roughly 2 1/2"x 3 1/2", completely polished, I find really good. It fits most places, is easy to hold, heavy enough,and the right angle sides make it easy to judge when it is square to the rivet. In fact, it's perfect hand size makes it sometimes easier to than a a tungsten bar unless there are space limitations.
Bill Brooks
Ottawa Canada
Rv-6A finishing kit

Another Perspective

apkp777 said:

A tungsten bar is NOT an option. Coming from from someone who has shot hundreds of thousands of rivets take my word for it!

I only have one tungsten bar and used it for 99% of the rivets on my plane. If I build another RV I will find another tungsten bar to do the remaining 1% of the rivets.

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This subject just goes to show you how two people with similar experience can arrive at opposite conclusions. I too have shot hundreds of thousands of rivets, the overwhelming majority being AD5 and AD6 rivets, rivets that you have to LAY INTO. All were backed with a lump of common hardened steel. The idea of bucking itsy bitsy AD3 and AD4 rivets using tungsten seems laughable to me. These rivets are so small that most men can hand-squeeze them for criminy sakes. Of course vendors will always claim their product is vastly superior to the alternative and try mightily to convince us that giving them money is the answer to all our prayers. Now, having invested the sum of $90-$150, the tungsten purchaser is suddenly transformed into a true believer. My company known to spend taxpayer money with ease and breathless abandon...never thought to equip its production workers with tungsten bucking bars at least up until the time I quit. Not all that long ago, all company bucking bars were equipped with a radioactive plug buried deep inside. Its purpose was easy detection in case one was accidentally closed up in an assembly. That practice was stopped some time ago when all bucking bars were turned in and replaced with common hardened steel. I don't think there are a whole lot of F-4's, F-15's and F/A-18's that ever felt the strange kiss of tungsten upon their rivet shop heads.

Vastly more important than the material the bucking bar is made from is SIZE and SHAPE. These things and these things alone dictate how much utility you can reasonably anticipate from any given bucking bar be it hardened steel or tungsten. If you can't reach the work, that bar is useless.

Whether it is an AD3, AD4, AD5, or AD6 rivet, my favorite bucking bar, the bar I automatically reach for 90%-95% of the time is this one. This bar was used to buck every single AD6 rivet in my RV-6A wing spars. Pricey tungsten? Please. I've got other priorities to spend my money on.

Bottom line: If I thought tungsten might give me a 10%-30% mechanical advantage over its common steel cousin, I would expect its price to reflect that modest advantage with a 10%-30% premium price, not be priced like man jewelry.

Rick6a said:

This subject just goes to show you how two people with similar experience can arrive at opposite conclusions. I too have shot hundreds of thousands of rivets, the overwhelming majority being AD5 and AD6 rivets, rivets that you have to LAY INTO. All were backed with a lump of common hardened steel. The idea of bucking itsy bitsy AD3 and AD4 rivets using tungsten seems laughable to me. These rivets are so small that most men can hand-squeeze them for criminy sakes. Of course vendors will always claim their product is vastly superior to the alternative and try mightily to convince us that giving them money is the answer to all our prayers. Now, having invested the sum of $90-$150, the tungsten purchaser is suddenly transformed into a true believer. My company known to spend taxpayer money with ease and breathless abandon...never thought to equip its production workers with tungsten bucking bars at least up until the time I quit. Not all that long ago, all company bucking bars were equipped with a radioactive plug buried deep inside. Its purpose was easy detection in case one was accidentally closed up in an assembly. That practice was stopped some time ago when all bucking bars were turned in and replaced with common hardened steel. I don't think there are a whole lot of F-4's, F-15's and F/A-18's that ever felt the strange kiss of tungsten upon their rivet shop heads.

Vastly more important than the material the bucking bar is made from is SIZE and SHAPE. These things and these things alone dictate how much utility you can reasonably anticipate from any given bucking bar be it hardened steel or tungsten. If you can't reach the work, that bar is useless.

Whether it is an AD3, AD4, AD5, or AD6 rivet, my favorite bucking bar, the bar I automatically reach for 90%-95% of the time is this one. This bar was used to buck every single AD6 rivet in my RV-6A wing spars. Pricey tungsten? Please. I've got other priorities to spend my money on.

Bottom line: If I thought tungsten might give me a 10%-30% mechanical advantage over its common steel cousin, I would expect its price to reflect that modest advantage with a 10%-30% premium price, not be priced like man jewelry.

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But you sound like a trained professional; you're probably able to perform well with a wide range of tools that would be difficult for an amateur (I can't imagine bucking an AD6, do you use a sledge hammer?).

As you pointed out in your post, size is a key factor; to me that means heavy, but small. Heavy bucks much better than light, and small fits into difficult, or small places. Satisfying those two requirements together means high density, and that's tungsten.

I did my tail and half of the wings with steel bars, and thought, do I really need a tungsten bar? The internet chatter said they're great, but how much better could they be. Then I bought one, and now I can't imagine going back to steel, in comparison, the tungsten bar makes riveting much easier (for this amateur).

John

Careful Guys!

Maybe we should discuss bucking bar material as used on a slider vs. a tip-up, and then what brand or type of primer to use on rivets shot with steel vs. rivet shot with tungsten. Then for good measure, throw in some alternative vs. traditional engine discussion capped off with some religion and politics.

Sorry for the drift, couldn't resist.

Tungsten, if you can afford it.

I REALLY like and appreciate Rick's advice, especially since I'm building an RV-6A and his experiences have saved me much headache. But on this one I can't praise that little tungsten bar enough. If you can afford to spend $80 to $100, get it. You will still find that you have to improvise on a few riveting situations where a narrow angle is required. I have used a chisel, a small 1/4 inch piece of steel and more to get the job done. That little tungsten bar is a pleasure to hold and manipulate with your fingers and palm while riveting. If I had used the large steel bars as long as some others have, I would have gotten accustomed to them and made them work.

Bars

As many others have noted, a tungsten bar is by far the best choice. Very compact and easy to position, especially inside the wings. Mine is a rectangle and has square ends. I have not found a need for the angle. I have used no other bar since I got one.
To address the original question, before I got my tungsten bar, my favorite one was a 3 lb chunk of polished steel that was the size of a bar of soap.
Probably all you will really need for 99 percent of the airframe rivets.
I found all kids of stuff to use as a specialty bar for those tricky rivets. Mower blade, ax head, ball pien hammer face, etc. Look around the garage. bet you have a dozen ready to polish bucking bars staring you right in the face.
But do yourself a favor and buy one of those little tungsten jobs....

RVNineA said:

I did my tail and half of the wings with steel bars, and thought, do I really need a tungsten bar? The internet chatter said they're great, but how much better could they be. Then I bought one, and now I can't imagine going back to steel, in comparison, the tungsten bar makes riveting much easier (for this amateur).

John

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Well put, John.

For me, the more important thing than making riveting easier, is that I now get better, higher quality shop heads, with less need for drilling out bad rivets. I imagine the difference may not be worth the price delta to someone (like Rick) whose non-tungsten shop heads were great to begin with.

I thought of it this way...

Being an amateur, do I want to spend $120 to instantly improve the quality of my shop heads throughout the rest of my project? Yes.


(Am I disappointed that my hardened steel bucking bar results aren't good enough on their own? Sure. Would the "ease" part still outweigh the price delta without the dramatic increase in quality? For me, it still might.)

A link to my post on my first tungsten bucked shop heads...http://n999za.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/i-love-tungsten-started-riveting-right-elevator/#Riveting

Sounds like folks are largely thinking price is an obstacle. We could get into another religion (economics -- there's a way to start a real thread war), and discuss elasticity of demand.

I'm not very sophisticated, so I'll just say it: I'm cheap. Which is why I bought my bucking bars from the same place that some of those high-markup fancy jewelry joints use: China. (We could also have a UPS vs. Fedex thread here, but to jump to that answer, these guys use Fedex.)

So I was able to bring price down far enough that I am now a very happy camper. BTW, I bought 2 bars to justify the freight. Still on the empennage, so have't decided whether or not I need the second one. But I figure someone out there will pay more than I bought it for should I decide that one is enough.

http://www.mculver.com/2010/04/bucking-bars.html

The thing that sold me on the tungsten bar was that it's *small* and dense. I have a feeling that 99% of the rivets on an F/A-18 or B-767 are relatively easy to access, by comparison, with many of the rivets on an RV, because of the small volumes we have within which to work. I'm sure there are many that are difficult to access, too, but then again...they're being bucked by people whose job is to buck rivets, not homebuilders.

The tungsten bar is, IMO, so much easier to handle when reaching up, blind, into some oddball corner of a small area on a small plane. Even for regular rivets, I can hold the thing in two fingers.

We built an -8 without it, and are building the -7 with it...no question. Tungsten bars kick @ss.

I would say a tungsten bar is a much better investment than, say, a pneumatic squeezer, which so far I've failed to see the point of...

Andy_RR said:

I would say a tungsten bar is a much better investment than, say, a pneumatic squeezer, which so far I've failed to see the point of...

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Do you have a pnuematic squeezer?

Started the empennage years ago with a hand squeezer...... quickly bought a pneumatic one - best $300 in the kit.

My Bro is the buckee - I shoot, so to speak I bought him a tungsten for his birthday last year - still raves about it and doesn't use anything else now. Not even the ax head we had to use for some of Mr Van's more 'difficult' rivets around the canopy frame

Get both, move on and start thinking about what primer you will use...... !