How do you make scale rivets on a plane is there a special tool you need?

If it is just the raised head type, take some RC-56 canopy glue open it up and let it get a little thick then you can take a tooth pick and dip it in and touch the surface and make them, I like to use a needle fill the tube with wood glue and let it drip out the end and touch the surface, I cut the sharp point off. With a little time you can make tons of them. And with defferent size needles you can have any size you need

I take the nozzles that you can buy for cyanos, and fit it over the spout of an aliphatic glue bottle. Then go along the line squeezing out little glue rivets, once practised you can achieve up to 20 rivets per minute. I tried both the soft setting (canopy glue) and hard setting sandable aliphatics, the hard setting was much better as the soft setting can flex during cleaning of the model and then paint comes off. Both glues shrink considerably as they dry, so do some tests first to find the correct wet size of drop needed to get the correct dry drop.

Harry

I have done both glue methods and have at times had problems with when they dry they shrivel and have non rounded tops and other times they were perfect.

any ideas on this maybe i need to dilute it more or i dilute it too much? I figure i need to just be more careful on my dilution measurements. I use elmers glue and dilute it about 25% with water giving me a 25:75 ratio now most of the times i just guess and i eventually get it right but am curious why i seem to get a lot of rivets i have to replace because of the crinkled heads.

A couple times I went to extremes and bought w bazillion pins cut the stems short added a little glue and pushed them into the surface. needless to say this took forever but the results were stunning.

Joe

Proflooney,

I'm with you on the pins. Time consuming, but the rivets are all consistent.

Mace Gill
The Aeroplane Works

Hi.
You can see my work doing rivets at:
www.pbase.com/danielmaia

Thanks.

I prefer to drill and place scale rivets from www.microfasteners.com I attach with a pair of tweezers and ca.
time consuming? Of course..but were looking for scale right? And the size is consistent. I've never had any luck with the glue method..too much shrinkage.

dany_maia your link doesn't work.

Here are some rivets from an earlier time (25 years ago) when sig still made rivets.

Looks good danny but you might wanna save ya sone time and hassles and grab up one of the top flight scale templates (part# TOPR2187) its really sweet as it has rivet size and placement, hatches, fuel caps and some other stuff in scale sizes from 1/7th scale all the way up to 1/3 scale. for the rivets you just slap it on your plane, line the panel line bar up with the panel line and mark the rivets which are set at scale distances to the panel line. Then when you are all done just go along and pop down all your glue drop or flush rivets.

Basically it saves a ton of time measuring and if you make the circles for the rivets to the size of the template you know how big to make the rivet for that scale.

Joe

Ok Dany Please Please dont think I am picking But I see from one of your shots the little concave rivets I have trouble with and am just using them as an example to show the probs I have. in your picture http://www.pbase.com/image/3987364&exif=Y there you have a lot of nice looking rivets and if you look close you can see that several also have shrunk in a spot giving a concave look rather than the nice rounded head.

Again my question is what ratio does everyone mix their glue and water with to get rid of this problem?

Bud I will have to look them up and give them a try sounds interesting.

PS I use one of them little fishing reel oilers for my rivet tool. after cleaning it out good they work great!! they dont have the sharp tip like the syringe to cut off and all you have to do is gently squeeze the tube. I do eventually get all my rivets to look nice but i hate having to redo half my rivets then redo half of them etc until they all are done. I am going to experiment with different types of glues to see if i can find an alternative. I was wondering if anyone has tried hide glue or any of the other carpenter glues?

Joe

When I do rivets there are two things that I do to obtain relatively consistent and uniform rivets. First I use R56 canopy glue mixed 50/50 with water. This glue seems to resist the shrinking that wood glue exhibits. The second thing is the tool. I use a 20-gauge needle with the tip ground flush connected to a small plastic squeeze bottle. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of forming uniform rivets. Anyway, it works for me.

Rip

thanks Bob I'll try the canopy glue i never thinned it before as a lot of people say they use it straight out of the bottle. will try 50/50 this time. just liked using elmers as its so darn cheap and i have it handily around the house hehehe.

Joe

Bud real Rivets on real Helichopters dont count

Joe

He,He,
that makes me feel good Joe. Only took 8 years off and on to finish. Probably could have built a real one in that time. More pictures at www.strictlyscale.com if your interested.

Dany,
Saw your cessna and from what I can see you appear to be a very talented young man. Truly a labor of love. I don't know much about the cessna but it also appears you've done your homework in the research dept, a must area if anyone is considering a scale model. My hats off to you, good luck in the future.

Bud

Hi Bud. Thanks a lot for your oppinion. You can be sure that it is a work of love. Me and my father are doing this plane with so much dedication that we are affraid to fly it, and because of this I am changing the engine to an OS 120 Surpass III, cause I am afraid that the Saito 91 don´t have sufficient power to move this 13.5 lbs cessna and if it crashes because of this I would be really mad!!!! We spent so many hours just in the finishings (painting, riveting, interiors, exteriors details, etc) that I think it will look really cool and, major of all, will look like a real cessna 182.

Joe: I didn´t mix any water in the glue and there are only a few rivets where what you describe happened, but I couldn´t do nothing to prevent it. With the paint that doesn´t even notice and they all look cool.

Thanks to all.
Daniel Maia

dany_maia, What you're saying about your model reminds me of one of Dave Platt's laws;
It’s a mistake to take a scale model out to fly while you still like it .

Joe, Have you tried Weldbond glue? It's a white glue but is quite a bit thicker than typical aliphatics. One thing I noticed is that it'll fill a gap without pulling back. It pretty much stays where you put it and it's strong. I found mine at Home Depot.

One other thing; Does the scale template by Top Flite have a scale ruler? I was just about to post an inquiry on where to get one. Frank Tiano has one but it's nearly $20. I'm needing something that will help me place hatches, panel lines etc. more than I need help in drawing them.

Greg:

The Top Flite Warbird Template has somewhat of a scale ruler. On the 1/7 scale section, there are seven tick marks to the inch. On the 1/6 scale section, there are six tick marks to the inch and so forth up to the 1/3 scale section. Below is a picture of the template. Hope this helps.

Greg heres a link to a pic of it on the top flight site http://www.top-flite.com/accys/topr2187.html No it doesnt have a ruler I use one of them triangle architectural rulers for that. I also use corel draw and import a good set of 3 views and trace them. I then enlarge them to the size of my model. I can then overlay them to my plans to check for accuracy of outline. Then I save them and print them out so when I need to detail my plane I have it right there with no measuring or guesswork.

As for the price I would check with a LHS or tower as mine was only like 5 bucks

Never mind I did a search on tower for you http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...=++&search3=Go it is 7.99 its well worth it greg as it makes riveting faster and has other scale goodies like hatches and fuel caps

Joe

Here are some other methods for making rivets which already posted.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/showthread...vets+AND+brass]

Kirk and Joe, thanks for the info on the TF template. That helps a lot.

I was playing around yesterday and it just hit me the perfect rivet stuff. if you ever goto like walmart back in the arts and crafts section they have paints for clothing. I was rumaging through the microwave cart drawer and saw a tube of my wifes "Tulip"(brand name) fabric paint. TULIP paints are formulated for strong adhesion and durability on Card, wood, glass, fabric, ceramics, etc. So I got playing around with it and this stuff is cool. it doesnt shrink and sticks to anything and has its own itty bitty tip you can make perfectly matched blobs. I say blobs as so far it is so thick you get pointy headed rivets. I will be experimenting with this to see if it can be thinned at all. If this stuff thins down to where you get nice domed heads this will be miracle stuff as i have seen how it does on clothing. You have prob seen iot before you know the designer type shirts the women wear that have that 3d design stuff on them. so far i have found it dries nice and you can pop rivets (so to speak) very fast and that with the water based paints at least they paint nicely. My next test will be to coat them with laquer polyurethane to see whether that affects them or not. as soon as I do some more experiments will let you know and post some pics. I know it films over and gets really stiff in abt 5 mins but the bottle says let dry 24 hrs and 72 hrs before washing fabrics with it on. As firm as this gets in 5 mins you can keep riveting and not have to stop for fear of ruining some still wet rivets.

Joe

Proflooney,

Please keep us posted how this turns out. I love "alternative" solutions.

Mace Gill
The Aeroplane Works

Well I tested this weekend with polyu and it affected them slightly but not bad. But how many people will be putting polyurethane over their rivets. Next step is to find out what to thin the tulip stuff with and try that. if i can get it thinned to where it leaves nice domed heads i got me new rivet making stuff hehehe

Joe