Do pop rivets get old?

[micky]

Do pop rivets get old? AKA blind rivets.

I've had two things that needed pop-riveting lately, the bag dispenser lid from the doggie bathroom that got knocked over, and the extension from my rear downspout, to take the water away from the house.

I"m 96% sure I used the same alluminum pop-rivets as the last several times, but this time, the nail part broke off before there was any appreciable bulging of the "sleeve" part.

I tried 3 rivets on the first task before I just used vice-grips to squish the sleeve.(It came out perfect.) The downspout seemed to work okay on the second try, but that's still 4 rivets that failed and only one that worked.

Do they get brittle with age?

Should I be using steel pop rivets instead? What are the advantage of them?

[Gordon Shumway]

First question first re your header: Yes, everything does. Next, do they get brittle with age: No. Last, should you be using steel rivets: It depends.

The steel rivets are for use in ferrous metals and the aluminum rivets are for use in nonferrous metals.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yes, and so are you and I.

I recently used a couple that I brought home from work in the 60's and they are perfect. No idea why the metal would change unless it reached a couple hundred degrees.

Use steel in steel, aluminum in most everything else.

[clare]

Some alloys age harden. Not sure if any are used in pulled rivets, but solid rivets are available both hard and soft - and soft ones are only soft for a limitted time. They may need to be annealed before use.

[micky]

Is that because of electroylsis or something similar?

Well, I don't know either if such an alloy was used here, but they were

20 or 30 years old. I've just about run out, and I bought a bigger box of assorted new ones, also aluminum, so next project I'll try the new ones too.

Thanks, all.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Actually, you could use aluminum is steel too, but you usually get more strength with steel and since you are protecting it with paint anyway, the rivet won't rust.

With aluminum, you don't have to add any additional protective coatings.

[clare]

And alunum and steel are not your only choices. There is also Monel and stainless steel - and likely others as well.

[micky]

Thanks, Ed, Clare. Sounds exciting. I wish I had more things to rivet. I think I hammered down one real rivet in metal shop in the

8th grade.

[Stormin Mormon]

Real men use bang rivets. No wimpy blind pop rivets for us Real Men.

Old blind rivets, just don't bang like they used to.

[micky]

One was to connect one piece of downspout to another. If I could have gotten inside the pipe, I would have. Even a blind rivet had the advantage that little would be inside the downspout. A screw,which I was going to use, would have caught leaves and eventually gotten clogged.

The other was to form one of two hinges on the metal box lid, of the box that dispenses doggie detritus transport bags. The other "hinge" was a very small plastic Xmas tree, that went through a hole in the box and a hole in the lid, but one of them had gotten broken when the whole thing fell over. I thought there would be truck or car tire-prints, but there weren't. Not sure what snapped off the _ _/ \_ metal post.