A RIVETING EXPIERENCE

Last week I eventually got the last 120 holes drilled in the base plate and over this weekend I cleaned up the holes with my old 10mm drill bit, both sides of the base plate plus the the chassis, 720 holes to be precise. the photo shows half of the chassis holes cleaned up and swarf removed, back breaking and shoulder numbing manual work, but it had to be done.

OK Monday, set aside for riveting, but what a day!! the first thing to go wrong was that, try as I might, I could hardly squeeze the bonding/sealing mastic out of the tube, by the time I had covered about twelve inches, my hand and forearms where aching even though I was squeezing the mastic gun double handed, I hoped that reason was, that because it had been quite cold over night, the mastic had thickened and my solution was to dunk the tube of mastic in very hot water for half an hour, It did the trick. It was a messy job and hoping to get two nice equal beads of mastic either side of the rivet holes went out of the window. One large bead was erratically applied which Jacquie helped to spread liberally over the chassis rails.

The base plate was lowered and loosely bolted down. With a bit of adjustment to the plate Jacquie started placing the rivets and I followed around with rivet gun which made a very satisfying sound as the big rivets where banged down. Excess mastic oozed out of the joints and got stuck on everything, so whilst I riveted Jacquie cleaned up with liberal quantities of white spirit and paper cleaning cloths.

I was on a role when half way through, the tip of the riveting nozzle disappeared inside the barrel, the tip had sheared off. I checked the air pressure and it was within limit, I was to put in frankly 'buggered'. I tried my hand pop riveter and manged to pull a few home, but no way was I going to be able to pull a hundred odd rivets that way.

Fortunately Machine Mart is only a five minute drive away and I soon returned with what looked like an identical gun although the nozzle had a slightly different profile and this one was shiny red, the only downside that it was twice the price at £60 from the Ebay one. Job was soon completed and all surplus mastic cleaned away. Time and more riveting will prove that buying cheap was a false economy this time.

At the weekend some chums are visiting and I hope to persuade the male halves to turn her right side up, in the meantime I will endeavour to get a refund on the defunct gun,