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I promised to send a quick description and some photos of a top snap riveter that I made. I did not want to damage the fresh paint job and planned on doing the job myself. The following tool is very simple, inexpensive and works very well.
1.) The basic riveter was purchased from the Bratton's catalog. It is a Bob Drake made item that is designed to remove door hinge pins. It did not work very well as designed and has been sitting on my tool shelf, idle for the past several years. (Pic #002). I am sure that with a little investigating an off the self "C" clamp could be modified to do the same job.
2.) I purchased a top snap repair kit from Sears item #9-74638 (Pic #009). This kit has the same top snaps that come with the Lebaron Bonny kit and swaging tools.
3.) In picture #003 is the exploded view how I put the simple riveter together in about 1 hour of prep time. I sanded the swaging tool (rivet up-setter) so it would fit into the existing cavity in the Bob Drake "C" clamp bolt. To hold the head of the rivet (anvil) I used a simple bolt that fit the open hole in the "C" clamp (Pic # 007). This configuration was used to install the top rail rivets. If I wanted to switch to the top fabric snaps, I made a cup to hold the nylon anvil, which goes against the outside head of the snap (Pic# 006).
4.) In trial and error experiments on the extra Sears snaps, I determined that it would take just under one revolution of the "C" clamp bolt to upset or swage the rivets. No noise or wildly swinging hammers needed.
Steve Ryan
The photos will be uploaded three with this reply and two in a second reply
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