Once I had found a supplier for the truss head and countersunk tubular rivets I needed to replace the damaged parts on the 52-Set, the next issue was finding an appropriate clinching tool to set the rivets, I ruled out the hand held, clinching sets requiring a hammer to clinch the rivets, Way too brutal! The way to go with clinching tubular rivets is by means of a slow and steady application of pressure until the proper closure is achieved.
A number of plier-like hand tools are out there but they all have limited reach and are expensive. The next option is really not much more than a modified C-Clamp. They can provide the slow steady pressure, but often lacked enough reach, were too wide, or the fixed handle got in the way. More important, the screw was typically not a precision thread, which allowed a lot of wobble in the tool.
While surfing the web one evening, I stumbled across a small company in the USA that specialized in the restoration of antique tin toys. The kind made between the 1880’s and the 1950’s. These toys use a lot of tubular rivets in their manufacture and this company had designed their own hand-clinching tool to get the quality they needed.
The main body of ¼-inch thick, tool grade steel. Both upper and lower screws are adjustable. The upper screw supports either a truss head or flat, countersunk rivet head. The lower, black screw is the clinching head. Something I had not thought of with the simple C-Clamp modified clinchers is the base of the C-Clamp, where the rivet head usually sits, ends up being so close to one side of the materials being riveted together, you cannot easily see if the rivet is properly seated. By making both ends of this tool adjustable, one can move the tool far enough away from the materials being worked on to clearly see how things are lining up. This company had done a limited production run of extra tools, the price was right, it had tremendous quality, so I bought one.
David
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18-10-20, 18:44
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