setting copper rivets with press

[Treesner]

has anyone used a press to cut holes or set copper rivets? 

Tandy is the only place I see with those options in a press as attachments but the 3/8 size fits my hiker press

https://tandyleather.com/products/press-dies-for-hand-press?variant=31977292365955

 

wonder how well it works?

 

also a 'decorative' rivet setting option

[dikman]

I don't see how you could set copper rivets with a press (unless it's a heavy duty hydraulic press!).

[Rhale]

I would think it’s much cheaper and easier to do by hand!

[Constabulary]

3 hours ago, dikman said:

I don't see how you could set copper rivets with a press (unless it's a heavy duty hydraulic press!).

Agree - I just recently set a bunch of heavier copper rivets while replacing carrying straps on vintage plywood pack boards. No way that I could have done this with a hand press and I really have a quite heavy one - not the "Cheap Charley" ones from China. I had to swing the hammer quite a bit to mushroom the rivets.

May work with a pneumatic, hydraulic or kick press but I don´t think it will work with a "plain" hand press.

[Handstitched]

A bit of ' brute force & ignorance ' works for me on copper rivets   

@Constabulary Is that yours ? Just wondering what the rounded  device is in the background?  Looks like something a milliner  would use,  an ' expanding' ....thingy?  . Curious  

HS  

[Constabulary]

Yes, its mine - press and thingy.  Its indeed an electrically heated hat shaper / spreader / stretcher from the 1930/1940´s

Edited July 23, 2020 by Constabulary

[Matt S]

Press mounted hole punches are pretty common. They're like £5-10 a piece here in the UK for smallish round ones on their own, £15 including the brass anvil, or maybe £20-30 for slot punches. There's a few different standards for threads and fitting so you have to shop carefully.

Burr/saddlers rivets are usually set by hand in leatherwork but similar rivets are set mechanically in other fields all the time, often in building aircraft, restoring classic cars, and various forms of engineering/blacksmithing/fabrication. Usually there's an riveting gun involved (electric or pneumatic) or there's a special sort of squeeze press, either manual or hydraulic.

I looked at this sort a while back, when I was looking at setting a quantity of copper saddlers rivets deep inside pouches. In the end single cap tubular rivets turned out the be plenty strong enough but I was going to buy something similar to this:

You can get basic ones for under £100, with different shaped "head" dies. You'd probably have to seat the burr manually, or maybe with an adapted top tool in a normal bench press. However the skilled/difficult/noisy/time consuming part of setting a copper rivet is mushrooming the head, and these take care of that quickly, silently, and very repeatably.

[Treesner]

12 hours ago, dikman said:

I don't see how you could set copper rivets with a press (unless it's a heavy duty hydraulic press!).

didnt make sense to me either? 

[mdawson]

An aircraft rivet squeezer is the first thing that popped into my head too, but aircraft rivets are aluminium and are possibly(?) softer than the copper rivets used in leatherwork.

If you intend to follow this up, perhaps contact the local chapter of the 'Experimental Aircraft Assoc' and see if someone has a squeezer and could test set a copper rivet for you.

Another alternative, if you have a compressor, would be a pneumatic rivet gun, basically just a hand held pneumatic hammer. Likewise an EAA member may test a copper rivet with a gun for you.

You can get hand squeezers and rivet guns from Aircraft Tool Supply or Aircraftspruce. I've purchased from both companies, both are help full and easy to deal with.

Mark

Edited July 23, 2020 by mdawson
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[fredk]

It is very possible and rather easy to set a copper or soft brass rivet with a press.

I've done it when relining the brake shoes for my Austin 7. The linings are held on by 8 soft brass rivets which have a flat round head which goes into a countersunk hole on the shoe lining. Where the rivet comes through the cast & welded metal shoe the rivet needs a head formed. I used to do it with a hammer and bar but if the assembly moves the lining can fracture so I started using an old vintage press tool.

The press is like a C clamp. On the foot is a steel disc for the flat rivet head and on the top end is a screw bar with a concave hole in it. Simply screwing the press closed causes the rivet to squash down until it has a nice round head on it.

It took far longer to type this than it would doing a rivet on the brake shoe. In fact I was able to rivet on 8 brake shoe linings in about 30 minutes, without fear of damaging either almost irreplaceable brake shoes or hard to get shoe linings.

Edited July 23, 2020 by fredk