Installing Rivets

New part has been added to the original blog, to make it a complete stor, informing about the removing and installing of the rivets.
March 14 2011

                             Update March 14 Removing and Installing Rivets

The hull is riveted to the oak frames as well as on certain locations bronze screws are placed to hold the planks in place I presume during the actual placing of rivets.

Since the hull is flush, rivets are not shown on the outside of the hull; it has to be determining where the rivets are positioned in the hull.

Since the positions of the frames are know the paint is removed with a sharp scraper and hot air gun on the positions of the expected rivets.

This is an easy process which does not take to much time but make sure that all the paint is taken away so that the plugs visible.

In case of the Storebro wooden plugs can be located now after the paint removal, under the wooden plugs the rivets are fixed.

The good thing of the Storebro original built is that the wooden plugs are not glued into the planks and are easily coming out.

The easiest method I found was to use a small chisel to knock the plug out; one does not have to be to careful since the planks where the plugs are removed from will be replaced eventually.

The next step is to remove the actual rivet, going over the internet it is often mentioned to use a small angle grinder and cut the burrs of the actual rivet from the inside.

I have tried this but found out rather quickly that this is not an easy method for a wooden boat since damages to the oak frames occur rather easy.

Also on a lot of places the angle grinder can not reach the burr of the rivet.

Therefore I was looking for a different method in removing the rivets.

The easiest method I have found till so far is to drill the head off the rivets from the outside to the inside, when the head was removed the rest of the rivet was than punched out to the inside of the boat. The head of the rivets were drilled off, actually this is quite simple with a sharp new drill bit, and copper is a soft material. If you do not want to use directly a drill bit slightly larger than the shank of the rivet you can first drill a small pilot hole with a small drill bit followed by a bigger seize drill to remove the complete head.

Also in this case one does not have to worry that the wood is damaged since the plank will be renewed.

Then the rivet can be knocked out with the burr to the inside of the boat.

After the new planks have been glued in place and fixed with a screw the new rivets could be installed.

To prevent that the frames become a Swiss cheese the planks were drilled from inside to outside on the position of the old rivet.

The next step was to prepare the hole for the plug which covers the actual rivet.

This was done with a taper point drill which is of a set with a matching wood plug cutter.

After that the rivet was punched into the hole one has to do this carefully since the rivet is from copper and when one wants to make this a fast job there is a big chance that the rivet will bend in the hole.

For the next step you need a good friend or a neighbor who also loves wooden boats, I my case I’m blessed with all three a friend who is my neighbor and he loves wooden boats.

This since the next step the actual riveting is not that easy especially with rivet heads which are sunk into the wood. The rivet head on the outside needs to be kept in place with a punch and hammer while from the inside the rove is placed over the nail with a rove punch.

Nail is than cut to the desired length and than with a hammer rounded over the rove while from the outside pressure is placed on the nail head to prevent that the nail is pushed back through the hole.

Additional information can be found on the below web side.

http://www.faeringdesigninc.com/instruct.html

After all the rivets are in place the wooden plugs can be inserted in the holes.

Make sure that the grain of the plugs is in the same way as the grain of the planks.
In this case I glued the plug into the planks to make sure that they would not come out, boat will be out of the water for at least another year.

 

Next step is to remove the part of the plug which is sticking out of the plank this goes the easiest with a small sharp chisel. Sanding an in my case protecting the wood with several layers of linseed oil to protect the wood against rot.