I love back riveting.

Ever since I constructed the flap I have liked back riveting most of all.  It works great for flush rivets.

Put a row of rivets into their holes, tape them in place, flip your project over onto the back riveting plate and apply the rivet gun to make a nice shop head.

Like I said, it works great on flush rivets.  But, I had to ask myself, what about universal head rivets?  Is there a way to apply the principles of back riveting flush headed rivets to universal head rivets?

Well, after playing around with the idea I found there was a way.  I mounted a universal rivet set die from a squeezer in to a 1/2" thick chunk of steel.  I clamped it to the bench and squared it up. (Perpendicular to bench top.)

I used some lumber to "shim" up to the height of the rivet set to place the parts I was going to back rivet against.  The shims would help to hold the parts flush or in line with the rivet set.

Here I am getting ready to back rivet some parts for the front horizontal stabilizer spar.

The part is resting on the rivet set and the taped over shims.  When the rivet is lined up in the hole it is very square.

I was able to put all these rivets in place in a little less than 30 minutes.  All the shop heads are great and no smiley faces on the universal heads.

Now, I just have to figure out a way to put the remainder of the aircraft on the bench for back riveting.............

Later,
BWW