44 Australian Wood Review
PROJECTIf you’ve never set rivets before,
practise by setting a few in some
scrap pieces. File them flush and
check that you have properly filled the
bevels. Try prising the scraps apart
when you’ve finished to see how well
they hold. If you really mess a rivet
up, don’t panic, they can be drilled
out and done again.Any lump of heavy, flat steel will
do for a peening block. Hold the
hammer close to the head and use
light blows, hitting the rivet head
with the ball not the flat face. The
rivet will slide back and forth at first,
so work alternately from each side
until it locks in place with roughly
equal protrusion on both sides.Strike near the centre at first, going
round in a small circle and gradually
working the metal out to round
it over and push it down into the
countersink. If you mis-hit, light
dings will sand out, but if you find
you have lots of misses, a couple of
layers of duct-tape around the rivets
will provide some protection to the
sides. Once you have a pair of rivets
in each piece, the remainder can be
drilled and set.Fitting the wedge block
Now fit the wedge block. To ensure
it ends up in the right place and at
the right angle, I make a temporary
wedge from scrap wood (don’t forget
to allow for the blade thickness).Position and clamp the wedge block
against this, and drill for its rivets.Photo 8 shows all rivets in place and
hammered down. They don’t look
very pretty at this stage, but that will
soon change.To add some support to those thin
projecting bits at the end of the
blade bed, I silver-soldered them
to the core, back to the first rivet
(photo 9).Cleaning up
To clean up the rivets, file off as much
as you can without marking your sides
(photo 10), then lap them smooth
using sandpaper stretched over a- Projecting corners
of sides soldered to
blade-bed. - Rivet heads filed and
ready to sand flush. - Side partially sanded,
rivets disappearing. - Fitting the infill.
- Test flight.
- Full-width shaving,
0.01" thick.
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