Tough rivet - help please!

I'm riveting a few fuselage skeleton areas before final assembly of the forward fuselage on my RV7. It's going fine so far except for a couple of nasty rivets which join the inboard cover support rib (F-783B) to the inboard floor stiffener (F-772B - excerpt from DWG 23 is below). The aft-most rivet is nestled close to the center section flange, and there's also a bolt head nearby to make things even more difficult. Does anyone remember how they set this rivet? To drive it I think would need the double-offset rivet set (a.k.a. rivet mangler), and it won't be possible to get it totally perpendicular. My pneumatic squeezer certainly won't fit in there. Even setting a pulled rivet looks hard. Any help much appreciated! Thank you.

I don't recall exactly how I did mine but I do recall re doing them at least once. From what I seem to recall I used the offset rivet on the gun, and then just had to get creative with the bucking bar. I do not recall having to use and improvised bucking bar, but that certainly may have been the case. I piece of steel bar or angle may work.
On another rivet I just cleaned up on another part of the aircraft, a friend of mine, suggested back riveting instead of trying to wrestle the bucking bar up there. It worked great.

Another thought I had was I recall having to undo a few bolts because I missed the note mentioning not to install after riveting. Might this be the case there.

I know these aren't exactly solutions, but maybe it sparked some thought for you to be able to get it done.

I think best solution is in general (if you know in advance that it gets very difficult) to use a cherrymax. I wouldn't fuss around much in these kind of spots. Strong pop rivet is no shame and the final result is often better than a screwed up solid one. You will forget the blind rivet 10 minutes later. And in your case it's the cover support rib after all.

But you can try to get access with the offset, if you have one...

Offset rivet set is your go to on these. Don't worry about perfectly getting the rivet set square. Anything close to square will work on these (just make sure it isn't angled far enough to mark the parts). I like the name you have for the double offset rivet set, I agree. haha

AndyWW said:

I'm riveting a few fuselage skeleton areas before final assembly of the forward fuselage on my RV7. It's going fine so far except for a couple of nasty rivets which join the inboard cover support rib (F-783B) to the inboard floor stiffener (F-772B - excerpt from DWG 23 is below). The aft-most rivet is nestled close to the center section flange, and there's also a bolt head nearby to make things even more difficult. Does anyone remember how they set this rivet? To drive it I think would need the double-offset rivet set (a.k.a. rivet mangler), and it won't be possible to get it totally perpendicular. My pneumatic squeezer certainly won't fit in there. Even setting a pulled rivet looks hard. Any help much appreciated! Thank you.

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Hi Andy

Yes I remember that bugger, but I had to look at my photos to remind me what I did about it. Looks like I abandoned the original hole and placed another rivet just far enough forward to satisfy edge distance and minimum pitch. Standard repair techniques.

Using the double mangler aka double offset, I use making tape to tape the set to the gun so it can’t turn. Without taping it, it will inevitably turn or twist the wrong direction and mangle the area.