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prkaye

Well Known Member
It seems to me that most builders get their helper to hold the bucking bar. Is bucking really the easier job? I figured it would be easier to train my wife on the rivet gun, and I'll do the bucking (that way I'm already on the shop-head side to inspect each rivet as they're being set).
What have other people found to be the easier job for the helper?
 
FWIW, I MUCH prefer to have the inexperienced helper SHOOT. I'm of the mindset that the bucker is the one who's responsible for the quality of the shop head. More than 50% responsible, that's for sure!! All the shooter has to do is keep the thing stable, pull the trigger, and let off the trigger after some reasonable duration.
 
Try it both ways on a practice piece, or in a inconspicuous place. Maybe she bucks a great shop head! Maybe she's a better shooter. When I have help, if it's my dad, we alternate, if it's my wife, she shoots. :)
 
I started out letting my wife buck, I found that it takes more know how to buck correctly than it does to shoot correctly. After a little training she got pretty good shooting 426-3. The only thing she didnt pick up on right away was the sound of a good or bad rivet, if it sounds bad stop pulling the trigger and figure out what the problem is. The first time I had a problem bucking and she was driving the gun she just kept going and I was screaming for her to stop but between the gun, ear plugs ect. she didnt stop till she was ready..... :rolleyes: Of course there are ways to mess up with the gun that will be visible to the outside world of you aircraft so its a judgment call as to what you allow who to shoot or buck. My father in law holds a bucking bar so firm that you would think you were bucking into a steel wall. On the other hand my wife.....not so well. and if its a tight/hard place to get a bar into you have to know how the bar will bounce and adjust for it during the bucking.
Anyway short answer is teach em to shoot, use two hands, one on the grip and trigger and the other hands thumb and index finger guiding the set to insure no slippage. Put it this way when I am over helping my buddy with his plane, Ill shoot, he can buck. Less liability that way. :)
 
It's easier to teach a helper to operate the gun. You, as bucker, get to contort yourself wherever, choose which bar works best/or at all, hold it absolutely at right angles to the rivet, and pass a rivet as acceptable or not and move on.
There was a good comment on this list by Scott McDaniels re. operating the gun - use a (modified) swivel head for flush rivets, ensure perpendicularity with the skin reflection, and hold the set with the other hand to stop it slipping.
I would add that a selection of bucking bars, including home made, is really helpful, especially a relatively small rectangular block with a 45 degree side.
Bill
rv-6A fuselage in progress,
Ottawa, Canada
 
No brainer

prkaye said:
......I figured it would be easier to train my wife on the rivet gun, and I'll do the bucking...........
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Your instincts are correct. Bucking requires a certain level of skill and a tolerance to endure uncomfortable physical situations. In addition, a good bucker almost instinctively knows how much pressure to apply to the work and when to back off. Many times, even building something as simple as an RV, there will be hard to reach situations that require some creativity to buck the rivet well.

Shooting, on the other hand, only requires you teach your wife to hold the rivet gun securely and to make sure the rivet set is placed squarely upon the work.

The exception to this general rule is if you elect to BACKRIVET. In that case, it is a simple thing for your wife to simply hold a bucking bar against the rivet while YOU shoot from the opposite side. This is a good option to use when you want to guard against dents at all costs and the skill level of your helper is unknown or known to be less than skilled.

In the production environment, 2-person riveting teams are an everyday fact of work life. If you could take a poll of these people, you would likely discover that overwhelmingly, given the choice almost all prefer to shoot. I only met one guy in 34 years who actually preferred to buck and I always let him have his way.
 
As usual I disagree

In almost every instance where I had to get into a difficult spot and let someone else use the gun while I bucked I had to do repair work. My wife got the hang of it and did OK but was never comfortable on the gun end of the job. All the bucker has to do is hold the bar steady on the rivet. The person with the gun has all the control.

Bob Axsom
 
I Buck Flush but Rivet on Universal

I use a swivel-head set for flush rivets so that gun perpendicularity is not so critical and I let my wife rivet while I buck. I find that I have a better feel of the progress of shop head formation and can adjust the bucking bar slightly to get better results.
She has more problems riveting on the universal head rivets, though, and often will release pressure on the rivet head before she is through pulling the trigger. That invariably results in a smiley at the very least. So on those, I rivet.
-mike
 
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my son insisted on bucking

So i let him buck what with his skinny arms he could get into the tight spots easier and he did a real good job. But with my wife she feels more comfortable with the gun so I let her do that; and I am so glad to have the help I try to accomodate them anyway I can.
 
Bob Axsom said:
In almost every instance where I had to get into a difficult spot and let someone else use the gun while I bucked I had to do repair work. My wife got the hang of it and did OK but was never comfortable on the gun end of the job. All the bucker has to do is hold the bar steady on the rivet. The person with the gun has all the control.

Bob Axsom
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Bob can perhaps clarify, but my guess is that he was using a fixed set, not the swivel set. It is almost impossible to mess up the skin with a swivel set, and my wife never has, but I can see where the fixed set could do damage pretty quickly. Not sure why people use them, except that they are better in tight spaces where the swivel set diamater might be too large. They almost certainly transfer the power from the gun to the rivet better, but I've never found the swivel set to be a problem in this regard.

Thus, to answer the original question, shooting is by far the easiest to do (in my opinion)... knowing how hard to push against the tail of the rivet is where all of the finesse is in my opinion. Actually, whenever possible, I'm an advocate of shooting and bucking yourself so that you can feel the rivet being set. The key here though is you don't want to be in a contorted position or where you can't see the shop head of the rivet as you're bucking.
 
Ditto,

get a swivel head with rubber guards, and the flat head rivets is no problem for my wife. Women typically have a good rytmic timing and that is all the is required with the countersink rivets. The rubber guard means she can hold the gun head steady between her fingers with her other hand.

The round head rivets is a different story, on those I typically handle the gun, she the bar. But luckily there are not a lot of those that you have to shoot!

Regards
Rudi
 
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ditto

dan said:
FWIW, I MUCH prefer to have the inexperienced helper SHOOT. I'm of the mindset that the bucker is the one who's responsible for the quality of the shop head. More than 50% responsible, that's for sure!! All the shooter has to do is keep the thing stable, pull the trigger, and let off the trigger after some reasonable duration.
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dans on the money here, unless you want to continually check her work this is the way to go.
 
of course

Bob Axsom said:
In almost every instance where I had to get into a difficult spot and let someone else use the gun while I bucked I had to do repair work. My wife got the hang of it and did OK but was never comfortable on the gun end of the job. All the bucker has to do is hold the bar steady on the rivet. The person with the gun has all the control.

Bob Axsom
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Bob, you should have let him/her do more then one here or there. with the swivel set it is a no brainer. and i can imagine with all your finesse she/he was probally scared to death. i know my wife was. but i promised not to scream if she screwed up. and she did well. :p
 
I guess I just don't understand why all the modern day "crutches". Just learn to rivet with the standard stuff. My wife drove most all the rivets on the fuselages and probably half on the wings with a straight (non-swivel, no rubber guards) rivet set. It ain't hard! I did most of the bucking on the fuselages (she didn't want inside) and we swapped out on the wings.
I agree that bucking is more demanding than driving. The bucker is the one who has to assure that the rivet is properly set and square.
 
Every time a new tool is developed, it could be considered a "crutch". But that's what tools are for... to make it easier to do better quality work!

The earliest aviators might consider an airspeed indicator and altimeter to be crutches, and aviators just a few years older than me may consider GPS to be a crutch (it wasn't around when i first started learning to fly). GPS is one crutch I'll be happy to have in my plane though :)
 
crutch????

youve got to be kidding.. if that is the case throw out your rivet gun and use a hammer :rolleyes:im sorry a rock. work production you'll learn to love tools. faster = $$$ and quality is as good or better.and so easy even a cave man could do it.
 
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prkaye said:
Every time a new tool is developed, it could be considered a "crutch". But that's what tools are for... to make it easier to do better quality work!

The earliest aviators might consider an airspeed indicator and altimeter to be crutches, and aviators just a few years older than me may consider GPS to be a crutch (it wasn't around when i first started learning to fly). GPS is one crutch I'll be happy to have in my plane though :)
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I totally agree.

Spend an extra $15 on a rivet set and remove most all of the possibility of an inexperienced helper making a mistake that causes damage.
 
When we were still actively working on the kit, Ellen did both. She screws up both too but no worse than me. She's allowed...it's her airplane too :D
 
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interesting data point contrary to popular opinion here. Tonight my wife and I did the elevator spar to skin rivets. She had far more success bucking. When she did the riveting with the 3X gun, I think her hands weren't strong enough to maintain the required pressure, and the flush heads didn't end up very flush. She was a wiz with the rivet gun though and we got all the rivets looking very good. With the exception of one "smile" which was my fault (question on another thread about this).
 
learning curve

well i knew she or mostly anyone could do either. as for my earlier cave man coment, learning to use the the cave man tools will really help out when you get into a tough riveting situation. because they require more skill you have just that, more skill. when all you have used is a squeezer, swivel set, back rivet plate, c-frame and then you have to use what i call a suicide set you will want all the skill you can get. i have often used the long set out of my c-frame for those rivets in cornes . one slip and this could really ruin your day. :mad:
she can do it . and if she's lighter and smaller than you than thats even better . let her crawl in the tail and buck all those while you do the easy part. ;)
 
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What's the opposite of a dent???

:eek: My dad came into town to help me finish the wings on my QB -7. He shot while I bucked; we did some warm-ups on scrap, and skinned the right wing with only a few small imperfections (only visible from a tight angle due to warping the reflection). However, half way through the left wing skin, the gun slipped to the left and made the opposite of a dent...a "welt" perhaps? A wrinkle? Has this happened to anyone else and is there a way to repair the skin so it doesn't look like it has acne?
 
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