Thanks for the replies!
Well, as other folks had pointed out, the squeezer was smarter than I am!
I had to go over to Avery's today for some other things, and I took the pneumatic squeezer along so that Bob Avery could take a look at it. He kind of chuckled, and said that he had already "had two calls of the same nature today"!
You guys were correct, and my mind was telling me something completely opposite of what looked like a proper setting. I was setting up dies in the squeezer, just as if I were setting up dimple dies to dimple. I was letting the two dies come together, and on a rivet? That doesn't work. When I used it on the HS, I guess I just got lucky. However, Bob gave me a 30-minute tutorial on squeezers today, and it was a lesson worth hearing!
I will try my best to explain the proper settings that I learned today (although it is tough to do in written print, rather than showing you in person):
Dimpling: Set the adjustable set so that the dies come together and touch with a little bit of pressure (everyone probably knew that one
)
Setting Rivets: Say for example, you have a rivet that the shaft is 1/4", for sake of discussion. Initially set the gap between the two dies at 1/4". Take a test rivet and squeeze the rivet without any other structure; just the rivet in-between the dies. It may squeeze down just a fraction...run the dies out just a few turns so that they are closer together. Try the same test again. The rivet should set a little more this time....Make fine adjustments until you get the right depth. After doing this only a couple of times, you will "get to know your squeezer" and not have to waste rivets each time setting up the depth. You can just 'eyeball' a rivet up against the depth of each size rivet.
Why is this so, when your mind tells you that the depth does not look anywhere close enough to squeezing the rivet to the proper depth? It is all in the intregal parts of the squeezers themselves. There is a lobe inside the squeezer that doesn't exert full force until it peaks on the lobe. I know this is tough to explain/understand. Bob even went as far as taking apart a squeezer and showing me all the guts, and how it worked from a mechanical standpoint. Seeing it in person made perfect sense.
I hope this helps someone else out along the way. And I wish to send a HUGE "thank you" out to Bob Avery. He took 30-minutes out of his busy day to explain every facet of a pneumatic squeezer to me. MUCH-MUCH appreciated, and a fine establishment to do business with.
Take care,