So im working on the bed for my 38' ford pickup. Everything is dissasembled, and Im working on replacing all of the body rot. Well I was planning on purchasing the bed rivet kit: and riveting the bed all back together. But ive heard from a few people that using these types of rivet's are a pain in the ***. Has anybody used these? What are your thoughts? Any advice? Thanks
I haven't used rivets since mid 60s in high school. There is a tool called a rivet set. It has one drilled hole and one concave divot. First you use the hole part to get both pieces of steel to lay flat, then use the concave part to mash the end. I can't believe it could be done by yourself, you'd need someone to balance the bedside while you mash..or hold up some sort of heavy iron to absord the pounding, if the bed is mostly together. anyways, BTTT
I work in the aviation industry so I have the air hammer rivet gun, different size and shape rivet sets, and bucking bars to do a half way decent rivet job and it is always better if you have a buddy to help. Some of the antique auto parts dealers sell hand hammer tools but they are a lot harder to use. Ford had hydraulic rivet squeezers to do the job easy but for us do it yourselfers that's not an option. Some of the large 1/4 inch rivets I've had to heat with a torch so I could mash em down with a 5X rivet gun. Model A frames are a challenge but with the right equipment their not too bad.
I built the bed on my 31 truck with those type of rivets. I used a ballpeen hammer and the concave punch. It was a lot of work, but I was happy at the outcome. I started with the ball end of the hammer, got maybe 80% done and would switch to the punch to clean it up (uniformly) I tried the air hammer but it wasn't working well for me. You need to built this in a very special way so that you don't end up not getting access to a rivet (front and back sides) so think about which one you wanna install first. I may have heated it to help in the process, not sure now.
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