shave rivet

[berrybus]

i boughtshave head rivets from fsi. the rivet is 1/2" what size shaver do i buy?thers was expenceve. thanks jim.

[JackConrad]

It that 1/2" length or 1/2" diameter?  I have not used any shavehead rivets, but watched a friend re-skin his bus with them. Had that happened before I re-skined my bus, I would have used them instead of buck rivets. I remember him telling me the shaver was very expensive, he did not mentioned anything about different size shavers. The one he had was adjustable. I think he got his from Byler Rivets. To make matters worse, someone broke into his bus at the storage lot and stole some tools, including the never used head shaver

[FloridaCliff]

Berry,

I re-skinned my 4905 using the shaved heads.

I bought my shaver from Byler, and at the time I paid around $190.00.

I thought that was way too much for the shaver, but, what ya going to do?

After 3000 rivets I can tell you it was worth every penny.

It was the fun part.  Nipping all the mandrels off the rivets before shaving is the real pain.

Ended up buying a 12" end nipper to do that.

Oh yes, on the shaver, one size fits all 3/16 and 1/4...Another for just 5/32..

Best of luck.

Cliff

[Brian Diehl]

There is one alternative.  Here is what I did:

Pull the rivet. Then using a cose cutter cut off the mandrel as close to the head of the rivet as possible.  Now, put a new 4-1/2" disk on your angle grinder.  Take the angle grinder and CAREFULLY grind the mandrel down to the level of the rivet.  I mean, carefully grind it down because you only have a little bit of rivet head to mess with before you start to loose the "locking" portion of the head that keeps the mandrel from coming loose.

Once the mandrel is ground down to the level of the head of the rivet it is time for your orbital sander.  Put 220 grit paper in your orbital sander and carefully polish off the head of the rivet.  I did all the rivets on my bus this way and have had 0 problems.  Of course, I only went through about 800 rivets, not 3000.  I could not justify the $200+ cost for a shaver and found this solution to work great.  YMV  Check out my profile for a link to my website where you can see the results of the approach I took.

[belfert]

Oh yes, on the shaver, one size fits all...

There are two sizes of the shaver.  One for 5/32" and one for 3/16" or 1/4".  Most busnuts would use the 1/4" rivets.

I see the 5/32" shavers fairly often on Ebay mostly advertised as for Airstream repair.  They tend to be a lot less money than the bigger model.  I can't recall if I have ever seen the bigger model in used on Ebay.