Rivet peening

Use a pair of rivet sets.

Ah - the useful things we used to learn in metalwork at school :) Bet they don't teach that anymore (riveting)...

Pop riveting .. ;)

The rivet should be approx the same amount over length as the diameter. Make sure it is supported underneath and everything is tight. A rivet set is the correct tool for this - but a socket or reasonably close fitting tube will do. Then, with the ball end of a smallish hammer go round the edge and sort of bell it over. Once this is done a couple of sharp square taps should give a neat enough finish. For a ball end you'll need the correct set.

Hope this is correct - it's a long time since I did metalwork at school.

You need to put the rivet through the holes in the parts to be fixed, and chop off the plain end so that only a few mm are proud. Then lay it all on a firm surface (like the back end of a bench vice) with the rivet head at the bottom. Then give the exposed end of the rivet a few glancing blows in all directions with the ball end of a ball-pein hammer so as to spread the rivet and make a good joint.

Tim Watts wrote: [snip]

Indeed, I won the second form prize for metalwork for a riveted set of kitchen tools and several things turned on a lathe or bashed out of bits of copper.

I don't think they teach any useful skills now.

First of all, are they cut to the right length? I would expect so, if they're supplied as spares. To make a nice domed rivet head against a flat plate, allow an excess length of about 1 1/2 diameters for a shallow mushroom head, 2 1/2 diameters for a rounded button. It's probably not fussy in this case though, unless they're obviously too long.

I assume that you're riveting through tubes (as it's a pushchair)? In which case, most normal riveting goes out of the window. Don't use any punches or sets, or else you'll crush the tube.

Assemble the bracket, tube & rivet. If the bracket is moulded plastic and double sided, then you're sorted. If the bracket is single-sided, then you need to close up the joint before you rivet it, otherwise it will give a slack joint afterwards. Put the head of the rivet downwards onto a good backing block: anvil, kerbstone, benchtop with something solid on it. Now push down on the parts around the rivet to close it all up - push, don't hammer.

Now rivet it up. Start with a lightweight BALL PEIN hammer - 6, 4 or 8 (if that's all you have) oz. You begin by hitting the rivet end-on with the ball pein of the hammer. This "looks wrong" because it's no way to form a rivet head. What you're trying to do at the start though is to bulge the rivet out sideways immediately above the bracket. This forms a good solid head from the bottom upwards. If you start out hitting it sideways to try and "make a head", you'll form the head from the top downwards, which makes for a weak and hollow head. There's also a risk of clenching it - bending the whole thing over sideways.

Once you have a good sized bulge in your rivet, you can start working the ball pein in increasing circles and start making this into a round button or mushroom head. Once it's of roughly the right proportion, switch hammer faces and shape it up with the flat face of the hammer.

Riveting is a quick process. If you do it right it's quick, if it's slow it's not working (and probably won't get better). You need to hit just hard enough to move metal - not so hard you screw up, not so light you just annoy the metal and work-harden it, without actually shaping it.

You don't need a rivet set for this job.

You need 1 & 1/2 protrusion to rivet it

Throw them away and use nuts and bolts? Use nyloc nuts or a pair of ordinary nuts if the rivet acts as a pivot.

I can only find protrusions in sets of 10.

That should have read...

You need 1 to 1 1/2 times the diam, protrusion to rivet it.

Dave

I've been away, have not seen the earlier posts and so may have got the wrong end of the stick, but are you sure that these single-ended aluminium rivets are not intended to be used with spring steel push-on washers with rounded caps? That is how a push chair we once had --Maclaren type -- was put together.

Stephen