Solid Rivets

Thank you everyone for your suggestions, but I was unable to find what I was looking for here in Oz. Well, there is plenty of aluminum ones and every type of Huck imaginable but no solid steel ones.

I'm currently looking at suppliers in the US.

Keables maybe?

www.keables.com.au/Rivets,%20Solid.pdf

And DD,

if you need to go overseas, this is a great site. I use it a lot.

www.aliexpress.com/af/steel-solid-rivets...iewCP=y&catId=145905

Jon_d, thanks for those links. Had a look at both but there is nothing that comes close, well a lot comes close, but nothing is a perfect match.

I did get onto a place in the US that specialises in rivets. I put in an order for a rivet gun and what I thought was the correct size rivets...

The holes in the frame are about 5 mm, so I got the fractional inch equivalents in both sizes either size of 5 mm. You can probably guess the rest..... neither rivet fits. I scratched around on the ground until I found an old rivet shank and measured it. Spot on 5 mm. Who would have thought an American truck would have metric rivets? So the hunt is on now for someone who sells metric rivets.

The gun is a dedicated riveting air hammer. The difference between a rivet gun and an ordinary air hammer is the blow it delivers. An air hammer delivers short, sharp blows and is really either on or off. The rivet gun delivers a relatively long, slow blow which can be controlled by how hard you squeeze the trigger. This gives you the control over how the "shop head" or back side of the rivet is formed.

Just in case someone stumbles across something, I'm looking for solid steel rivets, with a Truss or Brazier head, 5mm shank and about 20mm long.

Hi, I have some I need to do how much was the gun? Regards Andrew

G'day DD if you have slightly larger rivets why don't you just enlarge the hole slightly if you can't find 5mm ones?

Jon

The rivet gun was on special and I paid about $170 USD. I think it normally retailed for about $250 USD. The postage was about $60 USD from memory. Mind you, the same gun here was close to $1000 AUD from an aviation supply mob.

Jon, I'm trying super hard to keep everything as original as possible and I just can't bring myself to drill the holes out. The next plan of attack is to buy a lathe and turn down the bigger rivets to the size I want.

Put them in the freezer.

dry ice will shrink them more

I forgot to add that if you freeze the rivets to fit them, you need to get them back up to ambient temperature before you use the gun on them.