Ugly Rivets!

[Roadrunner]

I have removed many of the rivets on the interior skin of our Airstream's door to make a clean job of stripping the vinyl. I am replacing the rivets with 1/8" aluminum rivets and hand rivet gun from Lowe's. Why is it that some rivets the shank breaks off clean and other times the shanks extend out past the rivet head? Poor technique? Any way to address the ugly rivets? It would be challenging to drill out the rivets without anyway to center the drill bit. Any rivet masters...help!

Bob

[truckasaurus]

The variety in how the rivet pulls can be crappy pop rivets, technique, material thickness or hole size . (the door skins are layered and have different thickness depending on where you are riveting; plus the holes are unlikely to be consistently #30 holes still).

Once you've ensured you have the right length rivets and they are of suitable diameter you could decide to just tap the snapped mandrel into the door cavity or you could flush cut it and dress the cut end.

[Inland RV Center, In]

Originally Posted by Roadrunner

I have removed many of the rivets on the interior skin of our Airstream's door to make a clean job of stripping the vinyl. I am replacing the rivets with 1/8" aluminum rivets and hand rivet gun from Lowe's. Why is it that some rivets the shank breaks off clean and other times the shanks extend out past the rivet head? Poor technique? Any way to address the ugly rivets? It would be challenging to drill out the rivets without anyway to center the drill bit. Any rivet masters...help!

Bob

Basically, it has to do with the price of the pop rivets, which is quality as well.

Expensive pop rivets hardly ever give a mandrel problem.

Cheap pop rivets offer many many challenges, including very irregular mandrel breaking points.

Andy