Old American solid rivets

On 22 Jun 2004 00:47:06 GMT, (JDupre5762) wrote:

Many thanks for your replies. It sounds like the Round Head style
is what I was thinking of. The

aircraft dates from the WW2 period, '39
to '45. The Wirraway was Australian made, and I'm trying to see if the
rivets used were of either U.S. or
English origin, or whether they
were made to a local design. If at all possible, I'd like to use
original style rivets, although I'm doubting that this will be able to
happen.

The Wirraway was developed from the North American NA-16 series of aircraft.
Maybe the rivets are American design? I have long wanted to know what
difference there was between the rivet styles used by the wartime forces. It
seems pretty trivial but there are more serious issues that no one knows
anything about now and may be lost to history soon.

I have seen the rivet sets for the various older styles for sale in current
tool catalogs and I have from time to time seen collections of older style
rivets for sale at flea markets so it may just be possible to get them. I
would contact the National Air and Space Museum here in the US. I think if
anyone would know they would. I think the British style rivets are still
available in Britain. Read once about a Spitfire project that crossed the
Atlantic a couple of times and one of the issues was the replacement of all the
American style rivets with the proper British style.

John Dupre'

The old style rivets mentioned (flat head, brazier, etc.) are all over
the North American T-6/SNJ/Harvard series aircraft.

43-13 allows the substitution of "modern" (universal head) rivets, and
I belong to the "keep it simple, stupid" crowd grins.

There was stuff done back then that doesn't make a great deal of
sense now (for example, some components have an abnormally high
"part count", and border on "Rube Goldberg" solutions to
what could be fairly simple assemblies!).

Bela P. Havasreti