Use of Pneumatic squeezer on fuselage

It happened I never had a pneumatic squeezer and can not answer somebody's question. An interested party is interested how often you use the squeezer while working on fuselage? Is it worth investing? How many rivets it can set on fuse?
I finished mine long time ago and already forgot the count

I never used a manual squeezer (after the third rivet folded over). I squeezed every rivet with a pneumatic squeezer that wasn't in the middle of a panel that had to be shot. I got to where I could set a rivet with the pneumatic squeezer, pulling the trigger with my pinkie, one handed, upside down, backwards, and standing on my head.

Scott,
So you used it heavily on fuse, right? The guy bought unfinished fuse and have questions. To get the squeegee to his place costs a fortune and weeks if not more. Could you tell how many percent of rivets on fuse you set with you pneumo?

It's not just the squeezing....

that I love about my pneumatic squeezer, but the hundreds of dimples required in the ribs and stiffeners. Dimpling and squeezing hundreds of holes by hand is just asking for strain injuries to your hands & forearms. Your pneumatic squeezer will become your best friend while building your fuselage.

Pneumatic squeezer

I built my early semi-prepunched RV-8 with a hand squeezer, the 24" "C" frame with dimple dies for dimpling and a 3X pneumatic rivet gun with the normal assortment of bucking bars.

Might have taken a couple of hours longer, but it saved about $700 plus shipping.

Skybolt Al said:

that I love about my pneumatic squeezer, but the hundreds of dimples required in the ribs and stiffeners. Dimpling and squeezing hundreds of holes by hand is just asking for strain injuries to your hands & forearms. Your pneumatic squeezer will become your best friend while building your fuselage.

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Good point Al. Never thought about dimpling.

mannanj said:

.... but it saved about $700 plus shipping.

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The cost could be doubled+ for his location. No way to ship it back or service.

Anyway thank you guys I will translate all your suggestions to new builder.

I bought a cheep squeezer at Oshkosh this last year. I had finished up through the aft fuselage skins with only the hand squeezer by that time. So most of the fuselage was done with the pneumatic tool available.

I wasn't that impressed with the new toy. Maybe because I went cheap, but this one didn't seem to do as good as I can with the Avery hand squeezer. In most cases. There were a few occasions where I used it and was glad to have it. I continued to use the hand squeezer for most of the fuselage, using the air sqeezer when a tight space forced me to. For the most part, I think I'd rather have bought a SunTail than the squeezer.

On the other hand, it would be great for all of the spar doubler rivets on the tail and wing kits. No doubt mine will get properly abused on the next build.

Hi Vlad,

I got mine used from the Yards store for about $400 USD with a 3" yoke. It did cost me about $100 USD to post it over to me in Australia, it took about 3 weeks via USPS. I love it, and I could sell it when im done, however I dont think that I will be selling it. You can set rivets or dimple, what more could you ask for. no problems to set an AD4-6+ size rivets.
I would say I used it at least 50 % of the time on the fuse. If I couldnt get to something , then its the tungsten buck bur and 3X gun.

Just like Jamie, I used a pneumatic squeezer everywhere I could. I just finished my RV-10 fuselage and I don't own a hand squeezer.

Yes it's expensive and heavy. After a couple sessions, you can handle it quite easily with one hand. Using a hand squeezer is a multi-hand operation unless you have rather large hands.

With the ease of use sparing me from squeezing all those rivets and dimpling all those holes, it saved my hands from much fatigue. It also allowed me to work more quickly. It's well work the expense.

bob

My phneumatic squeezer is one thing I would grab in a fire... absolutely worth its weight in gold.