Using Rivets to fix a band clamp

I ordered a band clamp from Grizzly to match the one that I received when I got my replacement parts for my Dust Collector. I made a mistake the clamp was too long by about 1 in.

The revision blog

So I decided to fix it.

The Grizzly band in action. From their web site.

The one that I ordered had a spring clamp arangement and the one that I had, had a bolt that you tightened up with a screwdriver each time you took off the bag. I was going for easy of use.

What are rivets.
The common ones now are Pop Rivets, pieces of Alumimum that are inserted with a tool but they leave the back very rough. I was looking for something smoother.

My tool boxes had these.

The regular rivets and tinners rivets and burrs. All of mine were copper. They also make them in steel.

The differences are rivets are shaped like a flat head screw, thicker in the center and tapering to a thin edge. Regular rivets would be used for something like riveting a belt, where the thin edge is flush with the surface and the thick part compresses the leather at the hole.

A tinners rivet are used to join two pieces of metal together. The head is shaped like a nail, thick all the way through. The backing plates are called burrs.

Regular rivets are classified like screws #8, #9 and length etc.
Tinners rivets are classified as the weight of 1000 pieces. so 3lb means that 1000 rivets weight 3 lbs.

The length of a rivets when installed should be 1.5X the thickness of the materials being joined. So if the material is 1/8” then the rivet should be 3/16”. In my case I used a burr on the out side and so I used the “M” 3 lb tinners rivet.

I ground the old rivets off that was holding and measured the hole size and the length that I needed. All of the rivets were long so i use a burr plate to increase my thickness.

I used a hammer that you have all probably seen, but didn’t have any idea what it was for. It’s a Ball Peen hammer.

It’s designed to pound over rivets.

I used a 1/2” steel rod in the vise as my anvil to hold the top of the rivet tight in place.

I hammered (peened) the rivet tight to the bracket.

I had the air conditioning on in the shop and I need to open the 14’ door to get to the dust collector, so tomorrow morning I’ll install it or find out if it’s still the wrong size.

(Next day) It was the wrong size. Had to move the bracket another 1”.

-- Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com