Thread: Extended mandrel blind (pop) rivets

What is the inside width of the channel? I have a few different types or riveters for difficult jobs like this.

Just a thought, but assuming there is a standard length above the rivet head, if you get the longest grip length rivets you can find then is the mandrel longer overall?
If so, taking the mandrel out of a longer rivet and using it in a shorter one might be a possibility?
Ok - likely not the first choice if you’re looking at ~100 rivets, but….

Steve

Originally Posted by OxxAndBert

Ok - likely not the first choice if you’re looking at ~100 rivets, but…. Steve

Originally Posted by Techo1

What is the inside width of the channel? I have a few different types or riveters for difficult jobs like this.

I did consider cutting longer rivets, but too many involved.

Thanks for all the leads & ideas, but as I said, it all got too hard so I went with screws.
Job done, albeit not what I had hoped for.

Originally Posted by ptrott

Forgive me, I digress, and I guess I should be grateful that we can still get toilet paper from the supermarket, despite the best efforts of Chinid-19.

Looks like that has changed too now! At least where we are toilet paper is becoming a rare luxury due to the drivers shortage!

Originally Posted by ptrott

These rivets are for use in long nose rivet guns (which I do not own) for use in hard to reach places (which I do have).

I intended to use a couple of small nuts placed on the mandrel as I only need an extra 8mm of reach and less than 100 rivets for the job.

... snip.

It really surprises me in this day & age, just how many things are available overseas but not in Australia.
A few months ago I tried to buy a particular plate rack for storing plates vertically in a caravan cupboard, not available anywhere in Australia, common place item in Target USA, unheard of in Target Australia, so I had to pay $30 freight on a $6 (USA) item from Amazon. Forgive me, I digress,

.....snip.

Thank you for the application - it now make complete sense to this old brain and I wonder why I did not see it before. I can see Gary (old boss) applying the grinder to his spanners and wonder if he would have tried modifying the setting tool to fit in the channel (cringe)..

Did the rivets have aluminium mandrels? .. I have had a few ali mandrel rivets that break the mandrel in the wrong spot so I have to drill them out and start again... blamed my setting tool for damaging the mandrel as it was always at the end of the jaw mark, but thinking about it, that is where the max stress is, hence the necking..

Re supply, There seems to be a mentality in our retailers that if it does not sell in a few weeks, they do not stock it. Every so often I have been surprised to find an interesting item in one of the large hardware stores (Think clips, rubber mouldings, 5/32 (4mm) masonry screws in 50mm length) and then to come back a couple of months later with an application and find they are no longer available. These are huge stores, no lack of space. As a teenager in the Adelaide Hills the local hardware (little store built across the local creek) had a huge range in comparison and I bought taps and dies (Yes only whitworh), boxes of metal thread screws in model making sizes, occasionally large drills without reduced shanks, I drooled over morse taper shank drills on the shelf. Our food stores have done the same thing reducing the range of items... look at the lack of variety of flour compared to a few years ago. (Pops tomatoe sauce is another to see if you can find) I am told it is about efficiency. It really is a delight when I find a retailer, bricks and mortar or online, that has a wider range of items.

Hope your project lasts well and long so, as my Dad would have said, "it is not your problem again"

HavinaGo,

Cringe as you may, but in the interests of honesty, I did indeed modify one nozzle so that it would fit in the channel, which it did, but still left me short, however I drew the line at reshaping the nose as it would have left little material thickness at the sides.

The rivets are Ali with steel mandrels. I balk at using the term "Steel" because like you, I have had too many rivets end up with varying lengths of mandrel sticking out after snapping off where they shouldn't, so I think pure Chinesium is what they really are.
Pop rivets of 40 years ago did not seem to suffer the same shortcoming.

What you said about turnover dictating what is stocked is spot on, at least at the only hardware store left in the region where I live. Twenty years ago there were 5, but the big green warehouse came in and wiped them all out one by one.
I was talking to an employee of said warehouse and he told me that 90% or the stock on the shelves is not the retailers, but the wholesalers, who rent the shelf space and decide what gets on the shelves & what doesn't. I suspect it might be a little more complicated than that, but the basics are correct.

"Efficiency" is what they say, "Profits" is what they mean.

Thanks for your good wishes. I am at that age where it could go either way, so without willing my remaining life away, I hope it will not be my problem again