Flyin'Bryan

Flyin'Bryan

Well Known Member
I searched the entire forum using the word "buck," and as usual found lots of good intel on bucking rivets, but not precisley what I was looking for, thus this post to my fellow RV 8 builders.

I have all but finished mashing rivets on the HS, but I cannot seem to get my pneumatic squeezer with the 3 inch yoke to fit the small space for the 4 remaining rivets on the leading edge of each end rib. (top and bottom holes). Nor am I comfortable trying to get the tungsten bucking bar in there, since it seems to be a bit too small of a space for that as well.

I do not want to use pull rivets, and I am in the process of ordering the 4 inch thin nose yoke for the squeezer, but I don't want to wait for that to finish it up if I don't have to. I do have the cleveland close quarters bar with the dimple dye on the end, which is only about a 1/4 inch thick, and was thinking about strapping the tungsten bar as close to the opposite edge of that to give it some muscle, and then using it to reach in and buck those 4 remaining rivets.

Obviously many of you have already done this, so I'm sure there are many answers. I also have the end of a crow bar that will fit, and a small sized back rivet plate that will fit, but is a bit hard to handle effectively. I was just a bit saddened when I could not get my squeezer yoke to fit in there, especially since they were the last rivets on this assembly. So, looking for the quickest, easiest way to this this.

Thanks in advance.

Bryan
 
Bryan.

I just looked at my HS and can't remember how I did them! But one thing I've learned during this project, and life for that matter, is not to rush and be patient - whenever I have rushed I invariably made mistakes. If the 4" thin yoke will do the job I would wait for it to arrive, there is always something else you can be getting on with.

Bob
www.rv-8.co.uk
 
Its been a while, but a 4" no hole worked for most of those, but on a couple of rivets, I think the one closest to the trailing edge ( the fold of the skin) I had to use a back rivet plate and a made a custom bar to set the rivet. Basicaly a 1" x 1" steel bar, about 6-8 inches long, one end ground down on a 45-60 so degree angle and polished the face that sits on the rivet. Place the tapered end of the bar on the rivet, space up the other end so the bar is parallel with the backrivet plate (so you set the rivet straight down, not at an angle) and gave it a few wacks with a hammer about midway on the bar. Wish I had a pic, my description is probably clear as mud. If I remember, I also had to dimple these in a special way, I had to take a piece of 1/4" steel plate, drill and countersink the corner to make the "female die" side then put the male side of the dimple die in a rivet gun extension and just holding it by hand, gave a couple of hits with a hammer to form the dimple. This opperation may have been on the holes to hold the fiberglass tips on.
 
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"Homemade" No-Hole Yoke

Flyin'Bryan said:
.....I cannot seem to get my pneumatic squeezer with the 3 inch yoke to fit the small space for the 4 remaining rivets on the leading edge of each end rib. (top and bottom holes)......
Click to expand...
Bryan,

I do not possess a traditional no-hole yoke but I do have a yoke that is *almost* thin enough to access the last 4 rivets. What I did to make it work was shave the slots off a S.S. screw providing a smooth surface to avoid marring the rivet shop head while squeezing. Using a drop of super glue to keep it in place, I inserted the screw into the yoke like any other rivet set. Worked for me.

poghe.jpg
 
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Tight squeeze

Bryan,
I faced that dillemma as have all the other RV newbies and I went two routes depending on the mood I was in. Route one is to fabricate a custom tool as you encountered on these pages (to quote DanH: need a tool; make a tool). Route two is to use pop rivets. If you are remotely good at body work (you will be before you finish with the #*&!!*3 fiberglass stuff) you can make the offending shape of the pop rivet disappear.
Don
 
No hole yoke--

Bryan, I had the exact same issue as you a few months back. I bought a 4" no-hole yoke from Avery and it worked very well for the leading edge of the HS. I have since used it in other areas and I'm sure there will be many more opportunities for use as the build continues.

Skyking90201
RV8
Emp.
 
I tried most all of the suggestions I could find on this forum and ended up liking this one best. Online auction deal for $2 plus $5 shipping.

DSC00730.JPG
 
I used the Avery Tools hand squeezer to do this job.

The thinnest die was located inside of the Leading Edge (the die that does not move), while the thickest die was used on the outside of the Leading Edge (the die that does move).

Then, a series of small washers was used to extend the reach of the thick die by about 1/2".

This method worked quite well for me.
 
Thanks for all the responses.

I ordered the thin nose yoke today and should have it in a couple of days or so. Rick, I read your posts quite often and find myself wishing to be as adept at making custom tools and coming up with solutions to problems the way that you always seem to do. Maybe someday.....

Larry, I really like the look of that on line bargain you got as well.

Brian, I sent you a PM with my contact info. Let me know if it looks like we can hook up so I can borrow your yoke. While reading all the responses, another comment in yet another post came to mind where somebody metioned using a cold chisel to remove a badley swiped AN470 rivet head, and I wondered if something like that might also be used as a close quarter bucking bar that might work for this application. I have one that is 3/4 inch wide that seems like it might work if I tape it up real good. Might try that on a test piece and see what happens.

Always lots of ways to skin a cat in this metal game that we play I guess. I will also heed the comment about not rushing to solve this, as I have already been burned by that a couple of times. I also just endured performing a major repair to the HS forward spar as well, so I don't wany any more major problems on the HS at this point. The gory details are on my blog site if you are interested.

Dimpling is not a problem with the cleaveland close quarter bar/dimple die tool, combined with the .401 - sized insert that comes with their C-Frame, which fits right into my rivet gun. That system has worked great for me so far for dimples, but it won't work for the rivets. Back rivet plates seem to be a good solution for trailing edges, but not so much for the curved leading edge surfaces.

As always, this forum rocks, and I really appreciate everyone's quick response to my dilemma. Thanks again all, and happy building/flying!

Bryan
 
Post-mortum report - I borrowed Brian's thin nose yoke and performed the dasterdly deed last night on the 4 remaining rivets on the LE on both ends. (Thanks Brian!)

Lessons learned for anyone else that may venture on to this post:

1. Biggest lesson is that if I ever have to do this again, I will use a hand squeezer and not the pneumatic squeezer. Why? No matter how hard I try, I just do not have ANY decent amount of feathering control on the safety switch/ trigger mechanism on that beast-of-a tool. I messed up as a result.
2. Second reason for using the hand squeezer instead of the pneumatic - (the devil is always in the details) - As it turns out, the "thin" nosed yoke is still quite thick compared to the space you are trying to insert it into, and still did not allow me to setup things quite the way I expected.

Per instructions from the pneumatic squeezer, I used a 1/2 inch long x 3/8 inch wide rivet set to maintain sufficient depth on my adjustable ram threads so they don't get messed up. The thin nose yoke has a base that is 1 and 1/4 inches deep, instead of the normal 1 inch depth on other yokes, so you have to be careful not to unscrew the adjustable ram too far, or there will not be enough threads to support the ram - thus the reason for the longer rivet set.

Problem was, when you tried to line everything up, the rivet set did not sit flush on the top of the manufactured head of the rivet, by at least a 16th of an inch or more. This is because the bottom of the yoke still ends up hitting the bottom of the end rib before the rivet set ends up sitting flush on to of the rivet head, so you can't put the rivet set directly on the top of the manufactured head.

End result: I bit the bullet and did my best to get the rivet set lined up over the rivet head. 3 of the 4 rivets were set OK - I got lucky on those I guess. On the fourth one the rivet set slipped off the rivet and gouged things up real nice. I drilled it out, re-dressed and re-dimpled the metal in the skin near the hole, and tried again. I had no control over the ram of the pneumatic squeezer coming down - its always an "all or nothing" proposition for me with that tool. OK for use in areas where you can fit everything correctly, but NOT for this application IMHO.

I thought about shimming the rivet set to "extend" the length of the rivet set a little bit more, so as to remove the gap between the rivet set and the rivet/skin. But the shims are for adjusting the final set-depth of the rivet(After squeezing it), not the depth BEFORE you put the hammer down. If I would have done that I would have ended up over-squeezing the rivet. At least if you use a hand squeezer (non-pneumatic), you maintain some control and can apply enough pressure to ensure that the rivet set sits flush on the rivet head before squeezing it the rest of the way.

At this point I am so disgusted with the outcome of the riveting exercise of the whole HS that I may just order all new HS parts and start over. At least then I'll know that I have sufficient practice pieces that actually match the same dimensions and provide the same challenges as the real thing. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'll try to post some later to clarify my ramblings in this post.

Completely frustrated..... Wrong tool, wrong job - again!
 
Another post mortum report - setting VS LE rivets

Just wanted to update this for anyone that may be searching for answers about setting the leading edge (LE) rivets. So I bought a small 12 inch long demolition pry bar and ground it down on one end. Then I polished it up on the Scotch brite wheel. It worked on some test pieces, but not as well as I had hoped it would. It will probably work great for the trailing edge rivets, using it as a back rivet bar, but I just do not trust it to work well on the LE rivets.

Since I encountered this same dilemma at the finish point of my Vertical Stab, I had a decision to make. Based on answers from some of you I decided to order a hand squeezer from Avery tools. This allowed me to use a half inch tall by 3/8 inch wide flat set with the thin nose, no hole yoke, and gave me the control I needed to apply enough pressure on the hand squeezer to hold the rivet in place so that I could then honker down on the squeezer nice and easy like. I ended up with four nicely set leading edge rivets.
 
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