If anyone has a bigger pneumatic riveter they’d like to sell me please get in touch! I want to keep learning, improving and hopefully set some juicy big rivets on a cool project in the future. Hope you guys also go check out our sponsor LMNT, so excited to have them on board as I utterly love it! DrinkLMNT.com/forge
hey alex, i'm the son of a industrial designer who has arround 40 years of experience and i have myself a technical degree in machining and designing, if you are interested in asking questions about technical blueprints, i am at your disposition and i could try to convince my dad to help too, love you vids, keep at it !
Back in the day, I was a Great Lakes shipyard boilermaker. Whenever I got the chance, I would watch the riveting crew rivet hull plates. The riveting gun was easily 5 times larger than yours. The crew was made up of a heater, a thrower, a catcher, the riveter, and a holder on the other side of the hull. Hardest working guys in the shipyard.
Man I love your videos. I've wanted to start learning welding and metal work for a proper long time now and your stuff just makes me want to learn more. Every time I start saving for one life hits and says you're gonna have to wait on that lol. So until then I metal work and weld vicariously through these videos haha
I work on airplanes as an aircraft mechanic and this video was a representation of my first riveting attemps a few years ago. A few things you could work on: try smaller rivets first to learn how to align your hammer perpendicular to the surface of your workpiece. Riveting sideways is easier since you can control the pressure on the rivet better with your bodyweight. Try and set the rivet in one go, they harden quickly when hammering so keep it in one motion if possible. As some people said already, heat the whole rivet before inserting so the shaft can form into the hole before the head does. Read about tolerances and fittings of rivets, there are quite a few key differences depending on size and material. I cant judge it without seeing but the divet of your tool might have some wrong dimensions. The divet has to be a tiny bit wider than your rivet head and a little bit flatter so you can form it without making contact to your workpiece and damage it. This was a novel of a comment but I am excited to watch your progress and follow along on your journey. I love your content. Have a good one :)
Youi will note that rivets were originally TOTALLY heat to a glow. Not just the end that you are folding over. Thus, when you begin to flatten the rivet, it first swells to fill the drilled holes and then begins to round over. This allows for slightly oversized holes to allow easy alignment and assembly.
I wonder if that was why the rivet heads ended up off-center too. The heating will never be 100% symmetric, forcing the riveter to one side or the other.
I can’t lie, there was an audible “oh no” that involuntarily came out of my mouth hahaha. Although as you said, as long as the person making the part understands the drawing, that’s all that matters!
When you just look at how it's done, it seems pretty easy and straight forward. I remember, I also tried this on one or two projects, but always had the same issues like you. The head shifting to the side and not nicely formed. I never really could get it to work. Although I didn't had such a nicely restored rivetgun on hand, had to do it by hand. Great video, I enjoyed it alot. Can't wait to see what you'll rivet together next.
Watching Alec clean up his rivet gun my only thought was, my mechanics would have made it look brand new. Then when he found the broke spring all I could think was, "so I made a new one".
I think its like hammering a nail in - its not just bang bang bang - you are adjusting and directing you go. Ive not done riveting but Ive seen it done and they dont just pull the trigger. They are working it in a circle and FORMING the head around the stem
I can't help but think a big part of your problem is that you're essentially forming your rivets cold. I know you're torch heating the end so you can work the steel there, but in the old days (to go with your old tool) the rivets would have been heated in their entirety. This would cause them to stick to the hole during forming as well as cause the entire thing to deform slightly to become fatter and fitted to the hole you wanted to rivet, securing them FIRMLY in place to form a nice centered head.
I did the same reply just from watching Tom & Jerry cartoon. 🤣 They always had a bunch of them on top of coals before riveting them in and the one he shows from the side clearly shows the middle of the rivet stays narrow while the side heated deforms. 👍
Hey Alec, I worked as a metal fabricator and had the chance to rebuild an restore some old railings which where also riveted. The Rivets we used were only 6mm, so small enought to form cold. But I also noticed, the rivets were made out of some very soft steel or maybe even pure iron. They were forming really nicely and it was much easier to form a nice round head and to drift them wider compared to normal mild steel. Maybe consider using some softer steel or pure iron for the rivet stock material? I also think that this rivet hammer can handle much larger diameters since it feels a bit overpowered for 8mm rivets, maybe using it with less airpressure you'll have a bit more control to form nice heads. We had a much smaller air hammer which was also a bit overpowered for the 6mm rivets. Keep the great work up! Your videos are always fun and interesting to watch! Kind regards David
As a Boeing employee who works on much smaller rivets, this is very different from what I'm used to. I work with small aluminum rivets, and we would apply the rivet gun to the manufactured head and use the bucking bar to shape the driven head. I never would have guessed that it could be done the other way around without broader tolerances. Fascinating!
Another benefit of rivets other than the thermal expansion factor, is that when you compress the rivet to fasten your pieces together you are also expanding the shank of the rivet to fill all of the empty space in the hole. Bolts on the other hand, always have a small gap around them as a necessity of installation.
Gotta say I’m really enjoying the videos being put out on the channel these days! Really cool to see you hone your craft, learn new skills, and restore tools. I know some of the quick one day sponsored projects in the past pay the bills, but as a viewer this is peak Alec Steele 💯
I actually work with rivets all the time as an aircraft mechanic! The biggest thing that'll cause the head to go offset is the angle you have the rivet gun relative to the face of the surface you are riveting on. You really want to hold it as square to the work surface as possible.
yes this exactly, with these types of rivet guns its better to have the piece upright and fairly high off the ground around waist level, should probably have it set in a vice on the edge of a work bench for the scale hes working at so that he can hold the gun parallel to the ground and thatll let him have more control over the angle as it fires
I'm so dissapointed I had to scroll this far for the most obvious answer I could possibly think of with zero experience riveting. It hurt my soul with neither him nor Jamie realizing it and saying something.
May I suggest? Rivet head forms nicely when head material is 1.4-1.6x thickness of shaft. For 8mm around 6mm + intended shaft length. Also got neat little tool to make faster and better rivets. Similar blind hole tool you got but little more evolved. Block is first split in half and tacked together. Then blind hole is milled to center of gap depth is that intended shaft length. These pieces are then welded to vice jaw attachments. If have wide block you can make multiple holes and different sizes. When opening those rivet just falls off without any brutal force.
You've gotten yourself a lot of new equipment in your shop. Perhaps you should consider stacking some of it? A frame made from large steel members is pretty much what that size of rivet is made for.
A relative of me (learning the profession of a welder at BORSIG in the late 1950's, then working in special constructions for BABCOCK and finally in management, explained to me how bridges and other structures were made. A team of riviters was of 3 men: - a glower/thrower; glowing the riviets and throwing them up, using tongs - a catcher/holder; grabbing the glowing rivet with a leather glove, inserting it into the hole, holding a conkav anvil/hammer against the head of the rivet - a hitter; forging the convex/rounded head on the other side of the still glowing rivet When the rivet cooled down it shrank and gave additional force for the friction connection of the 2 parts.
I teach an aircraft assembly class at a trade school, we do cover cold riveting for those going to facilities that still use those techniques. We put the rivet gun on the factory formed head with an appropriate sized rivet set, and then use the bucking bar on the tail end of the rivet to squeeze the tail end and form the shop formed head. Biggest rivet we use is 1/4" though, YMMV
As a Boeing employee, most if not all rivets on an aircraft use a flat bucking bar rather than the cup on the end. Also, on the aircraft skin, the rivets are flush mounted rivets.
I love rivets too! I'm a boatbuilder and traditional small wooden boats are held together by thousands of them... Planks are attached to each other using nails riveted over small conical washers called roves, but larger components might be fastened by copper/bronze bar stock, cut to length and riveted over a heavy gauge washer. I've made loads of this sort of rivet using a bit of steel plate (about 12mm thick) with a selection of holes drilled in it. Clamp the bar stock vertically in the vice, drop the plate over it using whatever hole fits the stock, then peen the edges of the stock over until you get a nice dome effect (which ive just learnt is a snap head!) The plate is just a loose fit so the rivet-to-be doesn't get stuck in it unless I've bent it. Even with a manual hammer it's easy to make the head offcentre if you're not looking, though. Dunno if any of this is applicable to steel rivets? On another tack, rivets holding a ship's shell plating together are flush on the outside, being formed in a countersink... Make some of those!
I work as an production technician in a foundry (Awesome as it sounds) and I have been doing some drawings for our maintenance department recently, and damn is it way more satisfying than it have any right to be to make them. Great to see you trying more stuff, rivets are indeed awesome. Wish I had a workshop to do stuff like this, thanks for bringing us all along!
Riveting is a bit of a dark art. It looks simple but it often takes two people to rivet successfully and by the time you master it, you are deaf as a post. I still find it incredible the SS Great Eastern designed by Isambard Kingdon Brunel and took 3 million rivets which were hammered all by hand. The rivet was a marvel of engineering as they would shrink and pull the two parts together super tight.
Suggested riveting project: riveted stand for an anvil. This gives you a long term test article that has to stand up to a lot of shocks. As a side note, when I was studying for my Steam Engineer’s license, an entire chapter was dedicated to riveting requirements for boiler steam drums. I still find it amazing that you can use rivets to join two pieces of metal well enough to contain medium pressure steam. The only remaining operational examples of this anyone is likely to find are on restored steam locomotives. The stationary boilers were all retired long ago as being too dangerous to keep in operation. If anyone knows of an operational stationary riveted boiler, I would love to know where it is. I have always wanted to see one in operation.
I use an industrial rivet gun for work on rusty cars for years, something weird i have noticed about them is they seem to like as little and light lubrication as possible. Too much lube and they do what yours is doing, where they vibrate rather than giving slower, harder hits. Love learning about blacksmithing from these videos hope the advice helps.
From someone who’s works in American trailer building. The rivet gun goes on the head of the rivet. You need to make a bucking bar for the other side. Start with a smaller riveter, bucking bar, and some 1/4” aluminum rivets. Aluminum rivets don’t need heated.
Is part of the problem of not setting centred to the shaft because you’re not heating the entire rivet to the same temperature? Now you’re hot riveting the tail end with a bit of shaft and cold riveting the rest. Every riveting operation I’ve seen has the entire rivet heated to the same temp.
no not for actual steam. he is in no way qualified to make actual steam boilers. even making a compressed air tank is very complicated if you want it to meet any safety code.
I have done a lot of repairs on old riveted frames for both steam and hit and miss engines. we heat the entire rivet up in a small forge then slide it through and head it. for larger rivets it's a 2 person operation. sometimes 3 if your doing a lot of them. forge man heats rivet tosses to backer man who catches it in a metal funnel with a handle slides it into the hole backs it with the buck and hammer man heads it over. i have found straight in works best with making good heads. maybe a quick spin to dress up one that didn't quite head over but normally just set yourself solid and hammer her in.
I'm a sheet metal guy in aerospace, work with aluminum. A few tips that will probably overlap with other commenters: The rivet gun and bucking bar need to be as perpendicular as humanly possible to the work surface and parallel to each other. Having a person to "buck" for you so you just focus on the rivet hammer being perpendicular helps a lot. Heat the whole pin. With aluminum it compresses to fill the hole and form the proper tail simultaneously. With partially cold steel you're not getting the full strength of the rivet with gaps likely in the hole. With steel that's probably less of a problem than aluminum though. Try horizontal instead of vertical alignment = mainly you shouldn't rock the hammer around to form the head like I saw this vid, just straight and smooth, a horizontal hold could help with that via body pressure to steady the hammer. Rule for aluminum is the protruding pin length should be at 1.5 times the diameter of rivet to have enough material to form a proper sized tail/head. May be similar for steel? This vid was awesome! Love your stuff! I watch with my kids often. Good luck!
This is just an observation and i am certainly No expert on rivets at all, but looking at the rivets being placed in the old films the whole rivet was red hot and not just the head that you heat up by your torch. just a thought !! Keep up the good work love it !
Your observation is on point and it is the correct application of “hot upsetting” aka hot solid riveting. Maintanining a core temperature along the whole rivet is one of the major requirements of a successful joint.
Correct hot riveting allows the riveting to apply a compression force to the plates which in turn increases the bond strength greater than that of the riveting itself. Same principle as applying the right torque to bolts.
No. 1. A turtle with riveted shell. No 2 You could make a steam punk large Rhino Beatle. Either one with a saddle for the kids to take pictures for the fridge door. Love your shared efforts as always, thankyou. 🐞🐌🪲🦋🐢 You know what, I think a butterfly for the first effort would be the easiest with flat sections as the design base. Very interesting. 🩰 riveted sign for a business.
Quick note on the sugary drinks. Sugar is good in moderation for hydration, it opens your intestinal wall and aids in absorption of salt and other nutrients. It is however an issue when you have too much sugar. I feel compelled to highlight this as people seem to think salt and water is all they need...
Very well said! Just like the Greek poet Hesiod wrote in 700BC "Observe due measure; moderation is best in all things." or "All things in moderation" all too often you find people believing in the binary belief something is either all good or all bad and not understanding perfectly normal, healthy, VITAL things like water can kill you - Yes, we need it every day otherwise within 2-3 days we die, but if you take too much of it, it'll kill ya!
This is pretty much why a lot of medicines say to eat with or after a meal, because your body isn't very efficient at absorbing nutrients or medicine on an empty stomach.
@@Zjefke86 This is true for most people, but if you're an active athlete, you can deplete your energy stores in your blood faster than your body can break down complex sugars. If you're doing intense physical activity for hours you can't always eat and wait for it to metabolize. The drinks used by professional sports teams for example include at least some sugar in them to aid in the absorption of the salts. If you're not being extremely physically active for long periods of time then sure, the sugar you get from diet alone will be more than sufficient.
@6:30 I'm definitely not even at a pre apprenticeship level, but, wouldn't hardening the steel on such an application risk it becoming brittle? Hence why the chisel end isn't hardened? I'm probably wrong but with the repeated hitting of a surface to chisel cause it to fracture? Whereas a softer steel would bend rather than snap?
As an auto mechanic this is why they teach you to use the impact rated black sockets with your impact gun instead of the silver chrome sockets. The chrome sockets are harder and wear less, but when subjected to sufficient force tend to shatter. I can also say, none of the various heads I have for my air hammer are hardened since they could shatter and send fragments flying back at me. I wonder if it's different in the case of the rivets because the rivets are hot and therefore softer then normal?
Another useful thing about hot rivets- As they cool they shrink and compress the joint even more than it was when hot. This is how watertight riveted joints were made on ships.
I grew up in a pub next to the London to Hastings train line. The old rail engineers used to say that riveting was a specialised job and only a few people were left that could do it. This was back around 1970. Now welding has taken over as one person can weld a joint but you needed two or three people to do riveting.
4:43 - Since you asked: there are 3 mistakes that any teacher would chew you out for - the part is missing a datum, dimensions should never be inside the contours of the part _(diameters in your case, I'd use leader lines and put them all to the right side),_ the transition radii between different diameters are missing dimensions _(lump them together with all diameters)_ and the fourth is more of a pet peeve I have - dimension values (numbers, tolerances, notes etc.) should be parallel to their dimension lines. It's how I was taught and honestly, horiznotal values _everywhere_ not only looks awful but takes up more space on paper as well.. If you wanted to be fancy just for the sake of it, you could add tolerances and surface finish/roughness values but that's wholy unneccessary here.
I wasn't going to pick it apart that small but if they're going there why not mention that most parts have at least one datum (unless that's what you mean by "missing an axis", but just so you know, in gd&t it's called a datum).. My only issue was not having either a radius or a tapered degree for the transition between the different cylinder sizes other than that it's perfectly readable imo.. ✌️🛠️
@@mattsmith1318 Oooh. Right. English ain't my native language so I didn't study engineering in it. Still have to search for some terms. I did mean a datum. Alec did model radii for each transition and they show up in the drawing but you're right that they are missing dimensions. I would pile those together with all those diameters to the right side. Sidenote: I don't like when all the values are strictly horizontal. It gives me the same feeling as reading Comic Sans xdd I can read it, but it sure as hell ain't pleasant :D I stick with writing the values along the dimension lines. When vertical, then to the left. Smallest dimensions closest to the contour.
Also according to standards we use in my country measurements should go from the smallest (closer to the drawing) to the biggest (further from the drawing) for the sake of reading ease.
Riveting was once described to me as a skilled job that anyone can do :D As you said in the last video, good tools are more useful when learning, I suspect this is more so for riveting. Try a couple of short hits and check if the shaft is immediately bending on first hits, then you can practice this till you can start the rivet with no bend on the initial hits with the equipment you have. Like a nail gun vs hammer, the more hits the more likely you are to bend the nail when learning. From my experience on aircraft (much faster setting speed though so not sure if the comparison is as important here), the longer I ran the rivet gun to set it then the more likely I was to get a bent rivet. Can you change the power on the gun at all, maybe try more/less power If you could beg/borrow/rent a proper riveter to compare it to, and even get some of 'learning/skills' in the bag would help. I noticed your handmade rivets had a handmade ground chamfer on them rather than machined. Could this cause the first couple of hits to start the bend, maybe try a couple of rivets with a machined chamfer to see if it helps. Both a skilled and amateur can set rivets that look the same but one will be a lot stronger than the other (between work hardening, not fully expanded internal shafts, offset heads etc) I have even had rivets that expanded the shaft between two pieces and pushed them apart leaving an internal gap between pieces (hard to see if doing aircraft skins where you break the edges :P) I have no doubt that you will get the skills down to use the equipment you have, just don't try making a boiler as soon as you get your first rivets looking good please, we need more of these kind of videos :D :D
You need a guide for the hammer, alternatively something that keeps the hammer and bucker together - like those big "pliers" used on the Empire State. Love these nerdy videos!
Curious as to why you’re not using a press to form the first side of the rivet. Benefits would be you could do multiples at once and it may be more consistent
I loved a lot of working in the steel industry. Being in the steel mills and helping maintenance rail cars that were riveted together in the 30s was insane. We did some hot riveting as well. It was a unique job.
@Alec: I remember having seen an old docu about riveting some 20 or 30 years ago. One teaching retained was working in a team for not allowing the rivet to cool down: one guy heats the rivet hold by a second guy who passes and fits the rivet in its hole where the third guy immediately hammers the nearly still white hot rivet.
I once worked at a factory filled with pneumatic machines and tools. They are so much fun. Power tools might be more convenient, but there is nothing then a proper pressure hammer or a pneumatic riveter.
I'm an aircraft mechanic by trade. I currently work on the new F35. I used to build 747's for Boeing. I used to rivet structure to aircraft skins. Literally, around a thousand rivets in a day, a single shift. I would see rivets in my dreams! I hate frigging rivets!
The boilers on trains used to be made out of riveted steel. As a project idea, you could make a riveted air compression tank that would look cool sitting next to your steam hammer. Chasing down all the leaks would probably be fun for failures in a video. Not to say that I always expect you to fail somehow, but well... you know, eventually you mostly succeed. [laughs]. Hey and Happy New Year!
I sometimes get parts of bridges from the 1800s, which were entirely riveted constructions. The damage on these bridges is simply caused by insufficient corrosion protection, they could have lasted for another 100 years otherwise.
Back before the 1940s they really didn't use fall protection and even when it was used it was really just a rope tied around the waist and when some one fell it would cause spinal and organ damage. It wasn't until the 1990s we got fall gear that would not cause this damage. The reason I am telling you about his is because rivets were used just about everywhere including cranes, they had specially trained people to climb on up the steel beams and hammer every single rivet in place without fall protection.
If you pick your favourite big structure (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, Forth Bridge), you could try to build a full size section/joint. Basically pick a section thats 2 or 3 ft long and replicate it.
6:19 A lot of air hammer bits (at least in the automotive world) are not hardened so that they are more likely to role as a failure during use rather than shattering
As an Aircraft Structures Mechanic, this video was highly entertaining! I would really like to see your experience with aluminum/titanium/monel/inconel rivets. All of which are on the lower critical spectrum of fasteners.
Good video mate, this took me back to my Devonport dockyard Shipwright apprenticeship, i was the on the pneumatic dolly inside of the tanks caissons on refits back in 1992 ish ;. Some hot work and very claustrophobic, we had a oxy acetylene coke forge setup on the the deck where we where working on at the time, rivets got up to temp then slung out and passed up to my space with tongs. Then i put it into place, had a pneumatic "doll" with a ram and big threaded bar that i could adjust dependant on my area/space. The guy outside would Draw around the the area 2-3 times to draw the plates together before hitting the rivet, Always tightened it up nicely. \Shitty job being stuck in a hole with a flash hood on and red hot rivets thought :) Dan
As an armorer, I rivet with a regular hammer and even that is a bit of a black magic. A lot can go wrong on such seemingly straightforward piece of fastener. On the other hand - when you hammer them, the heads get a beautiful faceted surface. Sometimes when they come out too clean looking, I hammer them more just to give them that special "medieval" look :o)
"I don't think we can go work for Boeing Jamie" - No see you're too skilled for them. Your rivets wouldn't meet the standards of their new company motto: "You're Boeing to die"
Rivet a clock . Lantern pinions. Early clock like the one at Castle Comb. Rivet making , a pure pleasure. Made some copper ones for a pirates chest I made a vid of. Great to see your process, I think the steel stands up better to deforming in the pin than the copper. I would use a 2 part clamp if I did it again.
I'm an aerospace engineer and spent lots of time designing and analyzing structural repairs and working on shot up and crashed helicopters in various places including our in Afghanistan. A fantastic benefit of cold formed rivets is they produce a residual compressive stress in the workpiece which, on helicopters or pressurized fuselages, significantly improves fatigue life. It's far easier to get a consistent, predictable load path on repairs in austere conditions with rivets rather than bonded joints.
I've done riveting on aircraft before, working on finally getting my license. Try smaller rivets to learn better control of your rivet gun and bucking bar!! A good project to practice with might be making a sheet metal table using only rivets under a quarter inch diameter, it'll let you practice form and proper rivet spacing. And you put a big ol smile on the face of that metal; that can either be improper length or improper angle of the rivet gun
I think it is the heat that is uneven that is causing the offsetting of the heads when setting them. I think the normal rivet heads are cold stamped in a press, then at the work site they heat the whole rivet up so when it is backed and riveted into place it expands to fill the entire hole making a more secure connection.
Sometimes I forget how much strength all of this takes. Then, Jamie does something and I am immediately reminded of just how strong Alec probably is. THEN, Alec smacks a chunky cold bar to test rivets and bends it easier than I could hammer a nail into a wall, confirming his power.
Be very careful when hardening a tool for a pneumatic or hydraulic hammer. The original tool was not fully hardened because it only needed to be harder than the material it was designed to cut and even then the hardening was probably concentrated on the original cutting edge. When your tool is over-hardened (fnar fnar) you run the risk of it shattering with a lot of force, essentially acting like a grenade and totally f'ing you up.
4:47 Not actual engineer but I learned it. It's "ok" for a start. A direct tip to improve your schematics: Instead of using 85.5 & 83.5 at the 22.25 cylinder (27.9 side) use 85.5 + the fillet radius. And that you would do for every cylinder part. Through those changes, these "inbeween cylinders" length dimensions (18.9, 22.2) become obsolete and will make your schematic way more organized. And on the top you write it 2 x 45° for the chamfer (if it is 30° you write 2 x 30°) and you can drop the 15 on top.
One thing I think would be great to make is a riveted shield. Cool lookin, plus if you screw up a rivet, it adds character. PLUS you can sell it afterwards if you need to!
Alec, mate, you are going to want some quality glove on your hands to cushion them if you are going to use that gun for any length of time. Heavy leather with a cushioned liner mad of felt is what they used to use back when riveting was done as a profession. Now we have gloves for pneumatic tool use, which I would recommend for anyone using pneumatic tools regularly or ones, like this, that are heavy reciprocating beasts that will make your hands feel like they are made of sausages eventually. Cheap automotive mechanics gloves with the gel pads are good enough for occasional use and you might be able to just use that for your rare use cases. Now for what you can do with that gun if you put a proper, hardened chisel on it: peel off casings on damascus really fast, which I bet you had already thought of. Save on zip disks and have some fun at the same time.
When buying rivets I have always pre heated them and let them cool to ensure they are soft enough, and then inserted them in place and then heated the ends for forming and have had better luck doing so. Not sure if they end up work hardened during manufacturing. I'm an Armorer,, and I use custom rivets to rebuild WWII Browning 1919 belt fed machine guns. I have noticed that the originals didn't have the smile like mine when I'm not paying attention, all due to the men back then having pounded in millions of them and we have largely forgotten the tricks of the trade, but slowly we are relearning once again. I have also found that I like to just form them using ball peen hammers, especially if I'm building AKM Rifles. All in all you are only as good as your tools, and the practice it took to know how to use them
My grandad was a rivet boy at the Woolwich arsenal during WW2. He didn't tell me much but I know he used to catch the hot rivets in a bucket he would have been 13 and seeing this video brought all those memories back thank you 🙂🙂🙂
Jamie. So glad the tash has gone😂😂 Make a coffee table for the hose. Sheet steel and rivets. That would look cool . Especially if it looks like it has been cut from the Titanic, rusty sealed with bees wax????❤
Hey Alec, another aviation guy weighing in on this one. Point blank, bucking rivets like you guys are trying is tough, no two ways about it and it takes a lot of practice. As others have already said your early attempts are about what any of the rest of us managed. Keeping all of your tooling as square as you can to the rivet you are bucking is probably the biggest single thing you can work on, secondly putting things horizontal means you can manage the air hammer with your body and you can brace your arms against the rest of you body easier as well. Again, as others have said, practice on smaller stuff and it might help as well. Tolerances and materials matter, this may start getting into the engineering side of things, but different rivets are made of different grades of material so paying attention to that relative to what you are doing help as well. Anyway, I'm excited to see where this goes. Good luck and have fun practicing.
I think you should heat the whole thing. When you just heat the head the heat is local and you put all the force and in the deformation of just 10 - 20% of the rivet. When you heat it all (like in old cartoons) the force deforms the whole shaft inside the trough hole AND in the head. PLUS the heat last longer so you can hit it more times and harder. Love the content. 👍
If you use a T fitting you can install 2 smaller safety valves. Love a good riveting! I was taught to call your bucking bar a " Dolly" in Australia. Bucking is a American term. Your phnematic gun is also a great wat to drive out shafts from pulleys etc. G'day from Tasmania Happy new year!
If I remember my grandfathers stories correctly, the rivets should glow like the noon sun. One had less than a minute to get them in the hold, and the buck in place. Get the gun straight, and be quick on the trigger. He was a union iron worker in the who retired in the late 70's.
If anyone has a bigger pneumatic riveter they’d like to sell me please get in touch! I want to keep learning, improving and hopefully set some juicy big rivets on a cool project in the future. Hope you guys also go check out our sponsor LMNT, so excited to have them on board as I utterly love it! DrinkLMNT.com/forge
hey alex, i'm the son of a industrial designer who has arround 40 years of experience and i have myself a technical degree in machining and designing, if you are interested in asking questions about technical blueprints, i am at your disposition and i could try to convince my dad to help too, love you vids, keep at it !
Back in the day, I was a Great Lakes shipyard boilermaker. Whenever I got the chance, I would watch the riveting crew rivet hull plates. The riveting gun was easily 5 times larger than yours. The crew was made up of a heater, a thrower, a catcher, the riveter, and a holder on the other side of the hull. Hardest working guys in the shipyard.
Thought I'd take a look at the drink, but it looks to be America only.
Man I love your videos. I've wanted to start learning welding and metal work for a proper long time now and your stuff just makes me want to learn more. Every time I start saving for one life hits and says you're gonna have to wait on that lol.
So until then I metal work and weld vicariously through these videos haha
If you plan on using this thing on the regular, be sure to get some anti-vibration-gloves.
You're carpal tunnels and finger joints will thank you.
So you bought a riveter... It can't be long now until you start a series building your own steam train...
I reckon he's gonna make a trip to canada to help ethan
Ethan beat me to it!
How about a western style paddlewheel steam boat you should check out the belle of louisville 110 year old boat @AlecSteele
"Oh boy, am I a riveter!"
- Donald Duck
That's the first thing I thought of heading to the comments.
I work on airplanes as an aircraft mechanic and this video was a representation of my first riveting attemps a few years ago.
A few things you could work on: try smaller rivets first to learn how to align your hammer perpendicular to the surface of your workpiece. Riveting sideways is easier since you can control the pressure on the rivet better with your bodyweight.
Try and set the rivet in one go, they harden quickly when hammering so keep it in one motion if possible.
As some people said already, heat the whole rivet before inserting so the shaft can form into the hole before the head does.
Read about tolerances and fittings of rivets, there are quite a few key differences depending on size and material.
I cant judge it without seeing but the divet of your tool might have some wrong dimensions. The divet has to be a tiny bit wider than your rivet head and a little bit flatter so you can form it without making contact to your workpiece and damage it.
This was a novel of a comment but I am excited to watch your progress and follow along on your journey. I love your content.
Have a good one :)
There is always a hero in the comment section. Alec basically owes half his "education" to random youtuber commenters :P
This person Rivets, and thank you!
A lovely novel, very relevant and informative, 10/10 would recommend.
This comment was too short - I really enjoyed reading it...!!!
Brilliant "constructive" input... Thanks for that.
"Whys it not working?" *Finds components that are supposed to be inside the tool*,
Defeated by childproof box - most Alec sequence ever
Not his day, aye?
That's exactly the reason why he is the best TH-camr in the world ❤❤
“Extra parts” leftover after you reassemble something 😳
Youi will note that rivets were originally TOTALLY heat to a glow. Not just the end that you are folding over. Thus, when you begin to flatten the rivet, it first swells to fill the drilled holes and then begins to round over. This allows for slightly oversized holes to allow easy alignment and assembly.
that would habe been my comment, too
also when the shank cools it shrinks and pulls the pieces together tighter
I wonder if that was why the rivet heads ended up off-center too. The heating will never be 100% symmetric, forcing the riveter to one side or the other.
I am an actual engineer. The drawing has to be good enough for the person making it, you aren't an aerospace company don't worry about it.
Ive drawn up some pretty horrific stuff but its for me and I know where I started from etc.
I can’t lie, there was an audible “oh no” that involuntarily came out of my mouth hahaha. Although as you said, as long as the person making the part understands the drawing, that’s all that matters!
What is an 'Actual engineer'? Is it just anyone who stares at complex papers, swears a lot and (occasionally) gets something done? /j
What if the CAD drawing is done in PowerPoint?
it's certainly not somebody who feels the need to clarify they are joking after every joke@gp37521
When you just look at how it's done, it seems pretty easy and straight forward.
I remember, I also tried this on one or two projects, but always had the same issues like you. The head shifting to the side and not nicely formed. I never really could get it to work. Although I didn't had such a nicely restored rivetgun on hand, had to do it by hand.
Great video, I enjoyed it alot. Can't wait to see what you'll rivet together next.
I would love to see you restore a rivet gun... Perhaps after the Datsun 240Z is finished.
My mechanics is an absolute unit ❤
Watching Alec clean up his rivet gun my only thought was, my mechanics would have made it look brand new. Then when he found the broke spring all I could think was, "so I made a new one".
I think its like hammering a nail in - its not just bang bang bang - you are adjusting and directing you go. Ive not done riveting but Ive seen it done and they dont just pull the trigger. They are working it in a circle and FORMING the head around the stem
I can't help but think a big part of your problem is that you're essentially forming your rivets cold. I know you're torch heating the end so you can work the steel there, but in the old days (to go with your old tool) the rivets would have been heated in their entirety. This would cause them to stick to the hole during forming as well as cause the entire thing to deform slightly to become fatter and fitted to the hole you wanted to rivet, securing them FIRMLY in place to form a nice centered head.
The Doc prescribes more heat.
I did the same reply just from watching Tom & Jerry cartoon. 🤣 They always had a bunch of them on top of coals before riveting them in and the one he shows from the side clearly shows the middle of the rivet stays narrow while the side heated deforms. 👍
More importantly the rivet would then cool and shrink. The shrinking would apply force.
7:15 "While most of the video is _riveting_ , this is _boring_ ." genius wit once again, Alec XD
Yes! Had a chuckle.
Literally just woke my girlfriend up going ahhhhh when I heard it 😂😂
Had to stop the video and chuckle for second.
"We aren't going to work for Boeing" Nah, Its exactly what they are looking for.
Way too precise for Boeing
@@svenbendor653 way to hwhite for Boeing.
Boeing employee here, can confirm, he's a perfect fit
WOW......
Disgruntled ex-employee perhaps ?
Hey Alec, I worked as a metal fabricator and had the chance to rebuild an restore some old railings which where also riveted. The Rivets we used were only 6mm, so small enought to form cold. But I also noticed, the rivets were made out of some very soft steel or maybe even pure iron. They were forming really nicely and it was much easier to form a nice round head and to drift them wider compared to normal mild steel.
Maybe consider using some softer steel or pure iron for the rivet stock material? I also think that this rivet hammer can handle much larger diameters since it feels a bit overpowered for 8mm rivets, maybe using it with less airpressure you'll have a bit more control to form nice heads. We had a much smaller air hammer which was also a bit overpowered for the 6mm rivets.
Keep the great work up! Your videos are always fun and interesting to watch!
Kind regards
David
You know you're long in the tooth when you sign a youtube comment like an email
@@nukewurld you know you’re a young pup when you think that’s an email sign off and not signing a letter!
@@christravisedgar yeah 1940 was a while ago
@@nukewurld what?
Saw this in my feed and was like "Guess I’ll bolt over and watch it-don’t want to screw up and miss something amazing!"
Hehe
Don't you mean something riveting ;)
So you learned nothing?
You'd have to be nuts to miss it.
@TheMightySwash 😂
As a Boeing employee who works on much smaller rivets, this is very different from what I'm used to. I work with small aluminum rivets, and we would apply the rivet gun to the manufactured head and use the bucking bar to shape the driven head. I never would have guessed that it could be done the other way around without broader tolerances. Fascinating!
That tiny spring is called a volute spring. Double volute springs you might recognise from inside a pair of garden secateurs.
You are correct, I do recognise them from secateurs!
Thanks. 🫡✨☮️🇦🇺
what a brilliant explanation
Ohhh That makes sense. I though I had never seen a spring like that before, but you're absolutely right!
And on the bigger end they were used for the suspension on m4 Sherman tanks during ww2
1:08 gotta love it when the insides feel good.
Another benefit of rivets other than the thermal expansion factor, is that when you compress the rivet to fasten your pieces together you are also expanding the shank of the rivet to fill all of the empty space in the hole. Bolts on the other hand, always have a small gap around them as a necessity of installation.
Overtighten bolts can even stretch, increasing the internal clearance and allowing for more movement.
@@godalmighty83 overtightened or overloaded
Gotta say I’m really enjoying the videos being put out on the channel these days! Really cool to see you hone your craft, learn new skills, and restore tools. I know some of the quick one day sponsored projects in the past pay the bills, but as a viewer this is peak Alec Steele 💯
I actually work with rivets all the time as an aircraft mechanic! The biggest thing that'll cause the head to go offset is the angle you have the rivet gun relative to the face of the surface you are riveting on. You really want to hold it as square to the work surface as possible.
I'd also imagine even heating is important too.
yes this exactly, with these types of rivet guns its better to have the piece upright and fairly high off the ground around waist level, should probably have it set in a vice on the edge of a work bench for the scale hes working at so that he can hold the gun parallel to the ground and thatll let him have more control over the angle as it fires
Yeah, I figured that the way he was ‘orbiting’ the rivet gun around was pushing them off center.
I'm so dissapointed I had to scroll this far for the most obvious answer I could possibly think of with zero experience riveting. It hurt my soul with neither him nor Jamie realizing it and saying something.
May I suggest? Rivet head forms nicely when head material is 1.4-1.6x thickness of shaft. For 8mm around 6mm + intended shaft length. Also got neat little tool to make faster and better rivets. Similar blind hole tool you got but little more evolved. Block is first split in half and tacked together. Then blind hole is milled to center of gap depth is that intended shaft length. These pieces are then welded to vice jaw attachments. If have wide block you can make multiple holes and different sizes. When opening those rivet just falls off without any brutal force.
13:03 Loved the Rick Rolled joke and reference. It works! :D
You've gotten yourself a lot of new equipment in your shop. Perhaps you should consider stacking some of it? A frame made from large steel members is pretty much what that size of rivet is made for.
A relative of me (learning the profession of a welder at BORSIG in the late 1950's, then working in special constructions for BABCOCK and finally in management, explained to me how bridges and other structures were made.
A team of riviters was of 3 men:
- a glower/thrower; glowing the riviets and throwing them up, using tongs
- a catcher/holder; grabbing the glowing rivet with a leather glove, inserting it into the hole, holding a conkav anvil/hammer against the head of the rivet
- a hitter; forging the convex/rounded head on the other side of the still glowing rivet
When the rivet cooled down it shrank and gave additional force for the friction connection of the 2 parts.
"oooh insides feel good"
-Alec Steele
I went looking for this exact comment.
"We needed just a little bit more length. And, gentlemen, we did not have it."
11:43
5:16 "I want something that's going to get REAL hard."
7:12 "We need holes."
I teach an aircraft assembly class at a trade school, we do cover cold riveting for those going to facilities that still use those techniques. We put the rivet gun on the factory formed head with an appropriate sized rivet set, and then use the bucking bar on the tail end of the rivet to squeeze the tail end and form the shop formed head. Biggest rivet we use is 1/4" though, YMMV
As a Boeing employee, most if not all rivets on an aircraft use a flat bucking bar rather than the cup on the end. Also, on the aircraft skin, the rivets are flush mounted rivets.
danm parasitic drag. always spoiling the fun
@@dandreani it can actually be very useful sometimes
I want to see him make some blind rivets.
Or in the door, completely missing
@@roberteddy5595, that’s something you’ll never see.
"As I child, I yearned for the rivets"
16:26 oh, no, they would hire you on the spot
He's not diverse enough.
I love rivets too!
I'm a boatbuilder and traditional small wooden boats are held together by thousands of them... Planks are attached to each other using nails riveted over small conical washers called roves, but larger components might be fastened by copper/bronze bar stock, cut to length and riveted over a heavy gauge washer. I've made loads of this sort of rivet using a bit of steel plate (about 12mm thick) with a selection of holes drilled in it. Clamp the bar stock vertically in the vice, drop the plate over it using whatever hole fits the stock, then peen the edges of the stock over until you get a nice dome effect (which ive just learnt is a snap head!) The plate is just a loose fit so the rivet-to-be doesn't get stuck in it unless I've bent it. Even with a manual hammer it's easy to make the head offcentre if you're not looking, though. Dunno if any of this is applicable to steel rivets?
On another tack, rivets holding a ship's shell plating together are flush on the outside, being formed in a countersink... Make some of those!
With Boeing's recent safety record, I reckon they'll take you on as chief riveter
I work as an production technician in a foundry (Awesome as it sounds) and I have been doing some drawings for our maintenance department recently, and damn is it way more satisfying than it have any right to be to make them.
Great to see you trying more stuff, rivets are indeed awesome.
Wish I had a workshop to do stuff like this, thanks for bringing us all along!
The glee with which you play with the chisel is the visual definition of the phrase, "the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys."
Rivet length (for aviation at least) uses this formula: (sheet1)+(sheet2)+1.5(shank DIAMETER)=L
Riveting is a bit of a dark art. It looks simple but it often takes two people to rivet successfully and by the time you master it, you are deaf as a post. I still find it incredible the SS Great Eastern designed by Isambard Kingdon Brunel and took 3 million rivets which were hammered all by hand. The rivet was a marvel of engineering as they would shrink and pull the two parts together super tight.
Well the Cameraman with the magic hands did a damn good job for his first rivet to be honest.
@@FunkyBuddha81 Why do you think he has magic hands? He's got a _feel_ for the dark arts.
@Runedragonx He Said himself should i try, with my Magic hands
Is it? I made my own tongs and the robots were fine… it wasn’t louder than normal hand smithing.
@@Runedragonx Our cameraman follows the left hand path
Suggested riveting project: riveted stand for an anvil. This gives you a long term test article that has to stand up to a lot of shocks.
As a side note, when I was studying for my Steam Engineer’s license, an entire chapter was dedicated to riveting requirements for boiler steam drums.
I still find it amazing that you can use rivets to join two pieces of metal well enough to contain medium pressure steam.
The only remaining operational examples of this anyone is likely to find are on restored steam locomotives.
The stationary boilers were all retired long ago as being too dangerous to keep in operation.
If anyone knows of an operational stationary riveted boiler, I would love to know where it is. I have always wanted to see one in operation.
Forncett steam museum has an operational stationary vertical boiler in Norfolk!!
I use an industrial rivet gun for work on rusty cars for years, something weird i have noticed about them is they seem to like as little and light lubrication as possible. Too much lube and they do what yours is doing, where they vibrate rather than giving slower, harder hits.
Love learning about blacksmithing from these videos hope the advice helps.
sooo... you want more of a "chtonkchtonkchtonkchtonkchtonk" than a "brrrrrrrt" ?
From someone who’s works in American trailer building.
The rivet gun goes on the head of the rivet. You need to make a bucking bar for the other side. Start with a smaller riveter, bucking bar, and some 1/4” aluminum rivets. Aluminum rivets don’t need heated.
Is part of the problem of not setting centred to the shaft because you’re not heating the entire rivet to the same temperature?
Now you’re hot riveting the tail end with a bit of shaft and cold riveting the rest. Every riveting operation I’ve seen has the entire rivet heated to the same temp.
Don’t forget about the friction force between the two faying surfaces when bolting/riveting two pieces of metal together.
Build a steam boiler for the steam hammer.
YES !!!!!
My thinking exactly 👌
no not for actual steam. he is in no way qualified to make actual steam boilers. even making a compressed air tank is very complicated if you want it to meet any safety code.
@@ronblack7870 That's why we have Boiler Inspectors in England. If they don't say it's up to snuff it can't be used.
I have done a lot of repairs on old riveted frames for both steam and hit and miss engines. we heat the entire rivet up in a small forge then slide it through and head it. for larger rivets it's a 2 person operation. sometimes 3 if your doing a lot of them. forge man heats rivet tosses to backer man who catches it in a metal funnel with a handle slides it into the hole backs it with the buck and hammer man heads it over. i have found straight in works best with making good heads. maybe a quick spin to dress up one that didn't quite head over but normally just set yourself solid and hammer her in.
5:19 that’s a very good drawing for a first timer!
oh absolutely (tho making multiple vews with less dimentions per vew might make it more readable)
@@redwarrior69340 This part absolutely doesn't need more than 1 view to make the dimensions readable. Just rearraging them would be enough.
@inventiveowl395 just personal preference
@@redwarrior69340 Fair enough. Despite using cad, I'm still in the headspace of drawing with a pencil and being lazy with it xdd
I'm a sheet metal guy in aerospace, work with aluminum. A few tips that will probably overlap with other commenters:
The rivet gun and bucking bar need to be as perpendicular as humanly possible to the work surface and parallel to each other.
Having a person to "buck" for you so you just focus on the rivet hammer being perpendicular helps a lot.
Heat the whole pin. With aluminum it compresses to fill the hole and form the proper tail simultaneously. With partially cold steel you're not getting the full strength of the rivet with gaps likely in the hole. With steel that's probably less of a problem than aluminum though.
Try horizontal instead of vertical alignment = mainly you shouldn't rock the hammer around to form the head like I saw this vid, just straight and smooth, a horizontal hold could help with that via body pressure to steady the hammer.
Rule for aluminum is the protruding pin length should be at 1.5 times the diameter of rivet to have enough material to form a proper sized tail/head. May be similar for steel?
This vid was awesome! Love your stuff! I watch with my kids often. Good luck!
This is just an observation and i am certainly No expert on rivets at all, but looking at the rivets being placed in the old films the whole rivet was red hot and not just the head that you heat up by your torch. just a thought !! Keep up the good work love it !
Your observation is on point and it is the correct application of “hot upsetting” aka hot solid riveting. Maintanining a core temperature along the whole rivet is one of the major requirements of a successful joint.
This!!!!
Correct hot riveting allows the riveting to apply a compression force to the plates which in turn increases the bond strength greater than that of the riveting itself. Same principle as applying the right torque to bolts.
No. 1. A turtle with riveted shell.
No 2 You could make a steam punk large Rhino Beatle. Either one with a saddle for the kids to take pictures for the fridge door. Love your shared efforts as always, thankyou. 🐞🐌🪲🦋🐢
You know what, I think a butterfly for the first effort would be the easiest with flat sections as the design base. Very interesting.
🩰 riveted sign for a business.
Quick note on the sugary drinks. Sugar is good in moderation for hydration, it opens your intestinal wall and aids in absorption of salt and other nutrients. It is however an issue when you have too much sugar. I feel compelled to highlight this as people seem to think salt and water is all they need...
Eat fruit :p
If you have a balanced diet, there is no need to add any more sugar
Very well said!
Just like the Greek poet Hesiod wrote in 700BC "Observe due measure; moderation is best in all things." or "All things in moderation" all too often you find people believing in the binary belief something is either all good or all bad and not understanding perfectly normal, healthy, VITAL things like water can kill you - Yes, we need it every day otherwise within 2-3 days we die, but if you take too much of it, it'll kill ya!
This is pretty much why a lot of medicines say to eat with or after a meal, because your body isn't very efficient at absorbing nutrients or medicine on an empty stomach.
@@Zjefke86 This is true for most people, but if you're an active athlete, you can deplete your energy stores in your blood faster than your body can break down complex sugars. If you're doing intense physical activity for hours you can't always eat and wait for it to metabolize. The drinks used by professional sports teams for example include at least some sugar in them to aid in the absorption of the salts. If you're not being extremely physically active for long periods of time then sure, the sugar you get from diet alone will be more than sufficient.
@6:30 I'm definitely not even at a pre apprenticeship level, but, wouldn't hardening the steel on such an application risk it becoming brittle? Hence why the chisel end isn't hardened?
I'm probably wrong but with the repeated hitting of a surface to chisel cause it to fracture? Whereas a softer steel would bend rather than snap?
As an auto mechanic this is why they teach you to use the impact rated black sockets with your impact gun instead of the silver chrome sockets. The chrome sockets are harder and wear less, but when subjected to sufficient force tend to shatter. I can also say, none of the various heads I have for my air hammer are hardened since they could shatter and send fragments flying back at me. I wonder if it's different in the case of the rivets because the rivets are hot and therefore softer then normal?
A riveted chair would be cool
Aircraft mechanic here. Sheet metal and riveting is a big part of the job, and its great seeing other applications of riveting.
Another useful thing about hot rivets- As they cool they shrink and compress the joint even more than it was when hot. This is how watertight riveted joints were made on ships.
And they use a caulking chisel or iron where the two pieces of metal join each other. Also rust that forms also makes the seel
I grew up in a pub next to the London to Hastings train line. The old rail engineers used to say that riveting was a specialised job and only a few people were left that could do it. This was back around 1970. Now welding has taken over as one person can weld a joint but you needed two or three people to do riveting.
4:43 - Since you asked: there are 3 mistakes that any teacher would chew you out for - the part is missing a datum, dimensions should never be inside the contours of the part _(diameters in your case, I'd use leader lines and put them all to the right side),_ the transition radii between different diameters are missing dimensions _(lump them together with all diameters)_ and the fourth is more of a pet peeve I have - dimension values (numbers, tolerances, notes etc.) should be parallel to their dimension lines. It's how I was taught and honestly, horiznotal values _everywhere_ not only looks awful but takes up more space on paper as well.. If you wanted to be fancy just for the sake of it, you could add tolerances and surface finish/roughness values but that's wholy unneccessary here.
I wasn't going to pick it apart that small but if they're going there why not mention that most parts have at least one datum (unless that's what you mean by "missing an axis", but just so you know, in gd&t it's called a datum)..
My only issue was not having either a radius or a tapered degree for the transition between the different cylinder sizes other than that it's perfectly readable imo.. ✌️🛠️
@@mattsmith1318 Oooh. Right. English ain't my native language so I didn't study engineering in it. Still have to search for some terms. I did mean a datum. Alec did model radii for each transition and they show up in the drawing but you're right that they are missing dimensions. I would pile those together with all those diameters to the right side.
Sidenote: I don't like when all the values are strictly horizontal. It gives me the same feeling as reading Comic Sans xdd I can read it, but it sure as hell ain't pleasant :D
I stick with writing the values along the dimension lines. When vertical, then to the left. Smallest dimensions closest to the contour.
@inventiveowl395 no worries! Happy New Year!
@@mattsmith1318 Happy New Year!
Also according to standards we use in my country measurements should go from the smallest (closer to the drawing) to the biggest (further from the drawing) for the sake of reading ease.
Riveting was once described to me as a skilled job that anyone can do :D
As you said in the last video, good tools are more useful when learning, I suspect this is more so for riveting.
Try a couple of short hits and check if the shaft is immediately bending on first hits, then you can practice this till you can start the rivet with no bend on the initial hits with the equipment you have.
Like a nail gun vs hammer, the more hits the more likely you are to bend the nail when learning. From my experience on aircraft (much faster setting speed though so not sure if the comparison is as important here), the longer I ran the rivet gun to set it then the more likely I was to get a bent rivet. Can you change the power on the gun at all, maybe try more/less power
If you could beg/borrow/rent a proper riveter to compare it to, and even get some of 'learning/skills' in the bag would help.
I noticed your handmade rivets had a handmade ground chamfer on them rather than machined. Could this cause the first couple of hits to start the bend, maybe try a couple of rivets with a machined chamfer to see if it helps.
Both a skilled and amateur can set rivets that look the same but one will be a lot stronger than the other (between work hardening, not fully expanded internal shafts, offset heads etc) I have even had rivets that expanded the shaft between two pieces and pushed them apart leaving an internal gap between pieces (hard to see if doing aircraft skins where you break the edges :P)
I have no doubt that you will get the skills down to use the equipment you have, just don't try making a boiler as soon as you get your first rivets looking good please, we need more of these kind of videos :D :D
0:52 relatable
You need a guide for the hammer, alternatively something that keeps the hammer and bucker together - like those big "pliers" used on the Empire State. Love these nerdy videos!
Curious as to why you’re not using a press to form the first side of the rivet. Benefits would be you could do multiples at once and it may be more consistent
I loved a lot of working in the steel industry. Being in the steel mills and helping maintenance rail cars that were riveted together in the 30s was insane. We did some hot riveting as well. It was a unique job.
I assume many rivets turned out poorly because they were unevenly heated? So when hit with the rivet gun it didn't evenly form into a rivet.
Learning to peen rivets is an exercise in control... I messed up a lot of rivets learning that one.
0:04
Fascinated ❌
Fasten-ated ✅
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 hahahahaha
Okay.. I’m done..
@Alec: I remember having seen an old docu about riveting some 20 or 30 years ago. One teaching retained was working in a team for not allowing the rivet to cool down: one guy heats the rivet hold by a second guy who passes and fits the rivet in its hole where the third guy immediately hammers the nearly still white hot rivet.
Alec + powertools = maniacal laughter
The fact you forged a QR code is awesome and that the QR code is legit a Rick Roll= LEGENDARY!!! Love the work Alec.
0:45 we often hear that
I once worked at a factory filled with pneumatic machines and tools.
They are so much fun.
Power tools might be more convenient, but there is nothing then a proper pressure hammer or a pneumatic riveter.
The rivet- small but mighty, the fastener that built the modern world.
I'm an aircraft mechanic by trade. I currently work on the new F35. I used to build 747's for Boeing. I used to rivet structure to aircraft skins. Literally, around a thousand rivets in a day, a single shift. I would see rivets in my dreams! I hate frigging rivets!
The boilers on trains used to be made out of riveted steel. As a project idea, you could make a riveted air compression tank that would look cool sitting next to your steam hammer. Chasing down all the leaks would probably be fun for failures in a video. Not to say that I always expect you to fail somehow, but well... you know, eventually you mostly succeed. [laughs]. Hey and Happy New Year!
I sometimes get parts of bridges from the 1800s, which were entirely riveted constructions. The damage on these bridges is simply caused by insufficient corrosion protection, they could have lasted for another 100 years otherwise.
the rivet - Alec Steele, 2024
Back before the 1940s they really didn't use fall protection and even when it was used it was really just a rope tied around the waist and when some one fell it would cause spinal and organ damage. It wasn't until the 1990s we got fall gear that would not cause this damage. The reason I am telling you about his is because rivets were used just about everywhere including cranes, they had specially trained people to climb on up the steel beams and hammer every single rivet in place without fall protection.
13:07 -That steel should be scrapped! Look at how discolored it is.
If you pick your favourite big structure (e.g. the Eiffel Tower, Forth Bridge), you could try to build a full size section/joint. Basically pick a section thats 2 or 3 ft long and replicate it.
6:19 A lot of air hammer bits (at least in the automotive world) are not hardened so that they are more likely to role as a failure during use rather than shattering
13:03 🤣🤣 _This_ is hot rolled steel, _this_ is cold rolled steel, and _this_ is rickrolled steel. 🤣
As an Aircraft Structures Mechanic, this video was highly entertaining!
I would really like to see your experience with aluminum/titanium/monel/inconel rivets. All of which are on the lower critical spectrum of fasteners.
Good video mate, this took me back to my Devonport dockyard Shipwright apprenticeship, i was the on the pneumatic dolly inside of the tanks caissons on refits back in 1992 ish ;. Some hot work and very claustrophobic, we had a oxy acetylene coke forge setup on the the deck where we where working on at the time, rivets got up to temp then slung out and passed up to my space with tongs. Then i put it into place, had a pneumatic "doll" with a ram and big threaded bar that i could adjust dependant on my area/space. The guy outside would Draw around the the area 2-3 times to draw the plates together before hitting the rivet, Always tightened it up nicely. \Shitty job being stuck in a hole with a flash hood on and red hot rivets thought :) Dan
As an armorer, I rivet with a regular hammer and even that is a bit of a black magic. A lot can go wrong on such seemingly straightforward piece of fastener. On the other hand - when you hammer them, the heads get a beautiful faceted surface. Sometimes when they come out too clean looking, I hammer them more just to give them that special "medieval" look :o)
"I don't think we can go work for Boeing Jamie" - No see you're too skilled for them. Your rivets wouldn't meet the standards of their new company motto: "You're Boeing to die"
Rivet a clock . Lantern pinions. Early clock like the one at Castle Comb. Rivet making , a pure pleasure. Made some copper ones for a pirates chest I made a vid of. Great to see your process, I think the steel stands up better to deforming in the pin than the copper. I would use a 2 part clamp if I did it again.
I'm an aerospace engineer and spent lots of time designing and analyzing structural repairs and working on shot up and crashed helicopters in various places including our in Afghanistan. A fantastic benefit of cold formed rivets is they produce a residual compressive stress in the workpiece which, on helicopters or pressurized fuselages, significantly improves fatigue life. It's far easier to get a consistent, predictable load path on repairs in austere conditions with rivets rather than bonded joints.
I've done riveting on aircraft before, working on finally getting my license. Try smaller rivets to learn better control of your rivet gun and bucking bar!! A good project to practice with might be making a sheet metal table using only rivets under a quarter inch diameter, it'll let you practice form and proper rivet spacing. And you put a big ol smile on the face of that metal; that can either be improper length or improper angle of the rivet gun
I think it is the heat that is uneven that is causing the offsetting of the heads when setting them. I think the normal rivet heads are cold stamped in a press, then at the work site they heat the whole rivet up so when it is backed and riveted into place it expands to fill the entire hole making a more secure connection.
furniture: desk stand, chair
stairs?
maybe small bridge
Sometimes I forget how much strength all of this takes. Then, Jamie does something and I am immediately reminded of just how strong Alec probably is. THEN, Alec smacks a chunky cold bar to test rivets and bends it easier than I could hammer a nail into a wall, confirming his power.
At Boeing we obviously use aluminum rivers, but also we actually use the rivet gun on the head with a flat bucking bar on the back (2 man job)
Be very careful when hardening a tool for a pneumatic or hydraulic hammer. The original tool was not fully hardened because it only needed to be harder than the material it was designed to cut and even then the hardening was probably concentrated on the original cutting edge. When your tool is over-hardened (fnar fnar) you run the risk of it shattering with a lot of force, essentially acting like a grenade and totally f'ing you up.
4:47
Not actual engineer but I learned it. It's "ok" for a start.
A direct tip to improve your schematics: Instead of using 85.5 & 83.5 at the 22.25 cylinder (27.9 side) use 85.5 + the fillet radius. And that you would do for every cylinder part. Through those changes, these "inbeween cylinders" length dimensions (18.9, 22.2) become obsolete and will make your schematic way more organized.
And on the top you write it 2 x 45° for the chamfer (if it is 30° you write 2 x 30°) and you can drop the 15 on top.
As a person who has done thousands upon thousands of rivets, the biggest thing here that makes me nervous is you plugging into air with your die in.
Though we've just passed the holidays I can see you making a rivet wreath.
One thing I think would be great to make is a riveted shield. Cool lookin, plus if you screw up a rivet, it adds character. PLUS you can sell it afterwards if you need to!
Alec, mate, you are going to want some quality glove on your hands to cushion them if you are going to use that gun for any length of time. Heavy leather with a cushioned liner mad of felt is what they used to use back when riveting was done as a profession. Now we have gloves for pneumatic tool use, which I would recommend for anyone using pneumatic tools regularly or ones, like this, that are heavy reciprocating beasts that will make your hands feel like they are made of sausages eventually. Cheap automotive mechanics gloves with the gel pads are good enough for occasional use and you might be able to just use that for your rare use cases.
Now for what you can do with that gun if you put a proper, hardened chisel on it: peel off casings on damascus really fast, which I bet you had already thought of. Save on zip disks and have some fun at the same time.
When buying rivets I have always pre heated them and let them cool to ensure they are soft enough, and then inserted them in place and then heated the ends for forming and have had better luck doing so. Not sure if they end up work hardened during manufacturing.
I'm an Armorer,, and I use custom rivets to rebuild WWII Browning 1919 belt fed machine guns. I have noticed that the originals didn't have the smile like mine when I'm not paying attention, all due to the men back then having pounded in millions of them and we have largely forgotten the tricks of the trade, but slowly we are relearning once again. I have also found that I like to just form them using ball peen hammers, especially if I'm building AKM Rifles.
All in all you are only as good as your tools, and the practice it took to know how to use them
My grandad was a rivet boy at the Woolwich arsenal during WW2.
He didn't tell me much but I know he used to catch the hot rivets in a bucket he would have been 13 and seeing this video brought all those memories back thank you 🙂🙂🙂
The perfect project, a large iron fence gate. It could have all sorts of forged elements, combined with rivets.
Jamie. So glad the tash has gone😂😂
Make a coffee table for the hose. Sheet steel and rivets. That would look cool . Especially if it looks like it has been cut from the Titanic, rusty sealed with bees wax????❤
You should make a windmill with rivets and set it up to where you can utilize and get power for the shop does electricity ain't cheap
Hey Alec, another aviation guy weighing in on this one. Point blank, bucking rivets like you guys are trying is tough, no two ways about it and it takes a lot of practice. As others have already said your early attempts are about what any of the rest of us managed. Keeping all of your tooling as square as you can to the rivet you are bucking is probably the biggest single thing you can work on, secondly putting things horizontal means you can manage the air hammer with your body and you can brace your arms against the rest of you body easier as well. Again, as others have said, practice on smaller stuff and it might help as well. Tolerances and materials matter, this may start getting into the engineering side of things, but different rivets are made of different grades of material so paying attention to that relative to what you are doing help as well.
Anyway, I'm excited to see where this goes. Good luck and have fun practicing.
I think you should heat the whole thing. When you just heat the head the heat is local and you put all the force and in the deformation of just 10 - 20% of the rivet. When you heat it all (like in old cartoons) the force deforms the whole shaft inside the trough hole AND in the head. PLUS the heat last longer so you can hit it more times and harder. Love the content. 👍
If you use a T fitting you can install 2 smaller safety valves. Love a good riveting! I was taught to call your bucking bar a " Dolly" in Australia. Bucking is a American term. Your phnematic gun is also a great wat to drive out shafts from pulleys etc. G'day from Tasmania Happy new year!
If I remember my grandfathers stories correctly, the rivets should glow like the noon sun. One had less than a minute to get them in the hold, and the buck in place. Get the gun straight, and be quick on the trigger. He was a union iron worker in the who retired in the late 70's.