Finally getting the hang of it!!

[EfrainBG]

Hi, everyone!

Just wanted to share some advances I've made on setting cooper rivets. I've seen some amazing work on these rivets everywhere and I hadn't been able to replicate such results.

I went and bought a couple of fancy hammers... well, not so fancy, actually... more on the cheap side. But, anyway, I just wanted to try different head shapes and weights.

I also made a setter out of a punch marker (shown to the left of the photo). I cut the marker flat to about a 3/8" diameter flat head, drove a drill on the flat head and formed the dome with a Dremel. I used this tool first to round off the post after cutting it. Once rounded, I started flatenning and expanding the post with the first hammer in the photo from left to right. To finish the setting I used the hammer in the middle (which I rounded a bit) to start forming the dome right before using the setting tool again to get a more refined finish. I edited the next photo to exagerate a little bit the texture on the rivet's dome. The one to the right is just hammered down. The one on the left was smoothed down with a light pass of the setter.

Have a nice day, everyone!

Efrain

 

[JerseyFirefighter]

Looks nice. Im trying to figure out if it's just the perspective or are those burrs considerably thicker than the ones I use. It would never dawn on me to think that there could very well be a difference from manufacturer to manufacturer. 

[EfrainBG]

8 minutes ago, JerseyFirefighter said:

Looks nice. Im trying to figure out if it's just the perspective or are those burrs considerably thicker than the ones I use. It would never dawn on me to think that there could very well be a difference from manufacturer to manufacturer. 

Maybe it was a different gauge, Rob.

The ones shown in the beginning post are #9. IN the picture attached in this comment, I show you the #9 and its burr to the left and the #12 and burr to the right... As you can see, #9 is about 1 mm thick and #12 about 0.5 mm

[JerseyFirefighter]

Thanks for the comparison. I use both 9's and 12's. Ill do a comparison once I get back into the shop. If you dont mind me asking... where do you get your rivets from?

[EfrainBG]

These are from Weaver, although I got an early batch of 1" #9s from Tandy. I found no difference between them, so I mixed them up in one box and haven't had a problem of incompatibility between brands... they're quite probably from the same manufacturer.