Jim Burns wrote:
If you have adequate room to work, is there any disadvantage of using a
larger than necessary yoke?

If I'm purchasing additional yokes, why wouldn't I buy
a yoke that is capable of not only doing specialty work, but normal flat
work in areas where clearance isn't a factor?

Jim,

The reasons to use the smallest yoke possible a 1. clearance from
some other part of the structure. 2. deeper yokes flex more when
squeezing a rivet. This can make it more difficult to set the rivet
without bending it, usually when setting short ones in thin material.
3. larger yokes are heavier, adding to the squeezer weight that must be
held steady while setting the rivet. The pneumatic squeezer body is
already quite a chunk to hold steady.

From an RV builder's experience: Start with what you need to do the
job at hand, and buy yokes as needed (unless you have a lot of $$
burning a hole in your pocket, and empty drawers in the tool box. :-)
). Some tool vendors make yokes that are interchangeable between
pneumatic and hand squeezers. I only have a hand squeezer with a 1"
thin nose, 1.5", and 3" yokes. My yokes will not fit a pneumatic
squeezer. But, I'm mostly through with riveting on the project. (OK, I
confess to having an RV building buddy that has the full set of
pneumatic squeezers and yokes. :-) But...I have some small hand
squeezer parts that he doesn't have. The arrangement has come in handy
at times.) Yes, owning a pneumatic setup would have made some jobs
easier during building. On the other hand, most of the rivets on an RV
are 3/32".....very easy to hand squeeze. 1/8" are tougher to hand
squeeze, but there are fewer of them to deal with.


Got to spend time in and around the EAA B-17, Aluminum Overcast while it
was at Moffett Field this weekend!!!!

Steve