Hello all,
My newbie woes continued today as I tried to rivet up by VS, which has led me to reopen an old forum debate on whether or not old rivets can "go bad" from hardening.
I have a 13 year old tail kit that I revived, and did the practice kits prior to it. Of course my riveting skills are still very basic, but I thought that I had at least the basics of how to drive rivets down. Until I started to transfer over to the spar riveting with size 4's, and my rivets weren't so hot.
At first I thought it was just my bad technique, but while backriveting the flush rivets at the base of the spar I was having a really hard time. I kept turning up the air pressure because it was taking upwards of 10 seconds to drive a rivet - waaay longer than it took me in my practice kit. I kept inching up the pressure until it started to bounce, and I bent a few rivets that will have to come out.
I still figured it was my fault, and switched techniques to the pneumatic squeezer. I also had problems here. For several of the rivets, it would start to squeeze them and then just stop--it never had the full click that signaled the end of the squeeze. This was not for all of the rivets, just some of them. But it was almost as if the tool was not capable of generating enough pressure to fully set the rivet.
So what do you think? I searched the forums and found many folks who said yes, rivets can go bad, and then others would report that they have used 30 year old rivets without trouble.
I think to be on the safe side I'm going to order all new rivets from Spruce tomorrow since they are about the cheapest part in the airplane anyway. Just figured I would seek out some experienced wisdom.
My newbie woes continued today as I tried to rivet up by VS, which has led me to reopen an old forum debate on whether or not old rivets can "go bad" from hardening.
I have a 13 year old tail kit that I revived, and did the practice kits prior to it. Of course my riveting skills are still very basic, but I thought that I had at least the basics of how to drive rivets down. Until I started to transfer over to the spar riveting with size 4's, and my rivets weren't so hot.
At first I thought it was just my bad technique, but while backriveting the flush rivets at the base of the spar I was having a really hard time. I kept turning up the air pressure because it was taking upwards of 10 seconds to drive a rivet - waaay longer than it took me in my practice kit. I kept inching up the pressure until it started to bounce, and I bent a few rivets that will have to come out.
I still figured it was my fault, and switched techniques to the pneumatic squeezer. I also had problems here. For several of the rivets, it would start to squeeze them and then just stop--it never had the full click that signaled the end of the squeeze. This was not for all of the rivets, just some of them. But it was almost as if the tool was not capable of generating enough pressure to fully set the rivet.
So what do you think? I searched the forums and found many folks who said yes, rivets can go bad, and then others would report that they have used 30 year old rivets without trouble.
I think to be on the safe side I'm going to order all new rivets from Spruce tomorrow since they are about the cheapest part in the airplane anyway. Just figured I would seek out some experienced wisdom.
