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Aviation rivets for car body sheet metal


Ferd/289

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Has anyone attached or adorned body sheet metal with the aviation style rivets? By aviation I mean that the rivets are hammered from the back to enclose the layers of sheet metal. I have seen Jesse James and others sheet metal workers use them and the process looks really cool. Apparently they form a stronger bond than welding. Wonder what the process is. There are some areas of my interior ( which is aluminum ) which could benefit from this method.

Ferd

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It's pretty simple. Never seen Jesse James use them, but I use them on semis now and then. It's basically a peenable rivet, correct? I use an air hammer on one side and a metal dolly on the other side. Bump it with the air hammer and your done...or you can peen them by hand if you want. Another alternative is a stronger rivet which is called a "huck". It takes a special gun to install the rivets, but they are real strong and can leave a nice smooth head. you can even get counter sunk rivets so they sit flush. The tool is fairly expensive, but you may be able to rent or borrow one.

 

James Roraback

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I'm not even sure what your talking about and I work on aircraft. Are you talking about blind rivits? Basically beefed up pop rivits. Or are you talking about the "standard" rivits as mentioned earlier, air gun on one side, bucking bar on the other? These standard rivits(not the high strength kind) are weaker than sheet metal, usually aluminum in aircraft, and will break first. They are designed that way so you replace the rivit instead of the whole panel, this is especially important on aircraft because a new piece of metal from the manufacturer could cost a very pretty penny, not to mention the downtime needed to replace that panel! If you want to look them up, universal rivits are AN470 and countersunk rivits are AN426.

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