I think you'll be happy with the ATS gun, David. I bought an entire kit with gun, bars, and sets from ATS in the early 80's. I put a few drops of light oil in the air fitting when I think about it, and it's still going strong 30+ years later. The teasing trigger is sensitive enough that you can get one beat at a time out of it if you need to tap in a tight-fitting rivet. On the other end of the spectrum, I've set short 3/16 AD rivets to seal tooling holes in the RV fuel tank end ribs with it.
I will second Ed's recommendation to get a small in-line regulator for it. I leave the regulator at the compressor set at 90psi, which is good for the drill, die grinder, and squeezer, but you DO NOT want to set anything other than 3/16 rivets at that pressure. I've read many horror stories of guys who just KNEW they'd gone back and set the compressor reg for a 3/32 rivet and ended up ordering new parts. I look at the gauge on the in-line reg every time I pick up the rivet gun.
Miles
“I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.”
— Thomas Browne
Dave because gauges lie, do not use a set pressure. take a bunch of rivets in scrap material and see what it takes. I use a 150psi system and I regulate the air down to 90psi to the gun and then run the regulator on the gun as necessary. You should make 1 1/2 diameter rivet in about 1/2 second. the object is to do it in one shot not touching the shop head several times because of work hardening. practice before you do it on your real work. Also look on you tube for riviting. some homebuilder will show the process. It is not hard. Good luck D
+1 on the lying gauges, though they should be fairly repeatable. After replacing my inline regulator (after dropping it at least once too many times ), I had to learn a whole new set of numbers. When you practice, start with around 30 or so for -3 AD rivets, and around 45 for -4's, and work from there. You'll find that you will have to raise the pressure somewhat for longer rivets.
Miles
“I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.”
— Thomas Browne
Thanks, I'll give those pressures a try. My last practice session resulted in a nice collection of overdriven shop heads and smiles on the manufactured head. I think I ran the compressor at 80 psi. I want to get this right because I have some new seat rails waiting for installation.
My hangar co-owner built a nice F-1 Rocket from plans, but like many guys who have driven thousands of rivets, he has such a good feel for the gun and bar that he stopped looking at the pressure gauge a long time ago. His advice was something like "drive ten thousand rivets and you'll get pretty good at it!"
Back in my wildly misspent youth in early 1941 when I worked in armament for Lockheed, I occasionally had to do a little riviting on pick up work. I had a helluva time learning to do it right.
It really used to pee me off to see those girls building wings up on the second floor shooting more PERFECT rivits in five minuted than I did in two weeks.
They were really good and really fast. ( I'm talking about riviting now. )
DaveF wrote:Thanks, I'll give those pressures a try. My last practice session resulted in a nice collection of overdriven shop heads and smiles on the manufactured head. I think I ran the compressor at 80 psi. I want to get this right because I have some new seat rails waiting for installation.
My hangar co-owner built a nice F-1 Rocket from plans, but like many guys who have driven thousands of rivets, he has such a good feel for the gun and bar that he stopped looking at the pressure gauge a long time ago. His advice was something like "drive ten thousand rivets and you'll get pretty good at it!"
I've driven over 10,000 rivets on my RV-7 so far, and probably a couple thousand on the empennage and wing spars of a Harmon Rocket II project. I can tell by the sound about what the shop head is going to look like, but I don't think I'll ever get to the point I'll be able to ignore the pressure gauge. Smilies are getting fewer and farther between though.
If you're going to do seat rails, set up some practice pieces where you can't see the bucking bar, have to lay on your belly, and stand on your head... all at the same time.
Miles
“I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.”
— Thomas Browne
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), I had to learn a whole new set of numbers. When you practice, start with around 30 or so for -3 AD rivets, and around 45 for -4's, and work from there. You'll find that you will have to raise the pressure somewhat for longer rivets.