advice needed for Riveting new fenders

Steve, if you don't find any joy here, I bet the steam groups would be able to give you good advice

Steve, I have done a few sets of fenders and seat boxes. I have Chicago Pneumatic 501? It is an antique, but the same as current production. Figure out your grip length. There are several places online to buy solid steel round head rivets from. I made all the tooling out of S7 or 4340/4140. Smaller 3/16 rivets, I buck them up tight and use a hammer. I cherry the bigger rivets with a torch, you have to experiment on a sample piece, so you get the correct result. It does take some time because we don't have the facilities that the factory had.

Good luck, Herb

Steve, Just get one of those cheap $10 air chisels and cut one of the bits off, face it in your lathe and use a ball endmill the proper radius of rivet to form the tool. Make a bucking bar out of a big piece of cold finish steel maybe 2x4x1.5" use the same ball mill on the drill press and drill a shallow hole like the tool.
I've riveted thousands of 1/4" rivets on all the CAT sheet metal I've made over the years.

sideseat, any chance you could put up a video of how you rivet? I think it would be very educational for a lot of us.

I assembled the fenders for the Sixty today, I still need to attach the steps after some more bending. Attached is the Trial fit up, I was happy with the outcome. [attachment=61660]IMG_4979.jpg[/attachment]

Fender looks great!
The late George Rankin would bolt the pieces together then remove one bolt at a time and replace with a Rivet. Skinner

Fender looks great!
The late George Rankin would bolt the pieces together then remove one bolt at a time and replace with a Rivet. Skinner

There is a difference between air hammers which are meant for driving rivets and air chisels that you would buy at a farm store or Harbor Freight.
https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general-archive/whats-difference-internally-between-air-hammer-chisel-rivet-gun-86400/