I love the smell of rivets in the morning

[JAE]

The Times building (Flatiron) in NY - 1903

 

[JAE]

A very detailed, large version of this photo found HERE

 

[MintJulep]

It's been vacant since 2019, but the current owner intends to convert it to condos.

https://theticker.org/13744/busines...-condo-conversion-says-about-nyc-real-estate/

 

[Brian Malone]

A bygone era when structures had character, embellishments and function in equal parts...

 

[GregLocock]

I ran across a reference to British shipyards riveting hulls long after it had been proved that welding was cheaper, because unions. But then I remembered that riveting creates crack stoppers, and Liberty ships, so I was wondering if cheap steel plus riveting wasn't necessarily a worse outcome than better steel + welding, at the time.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[drawoh]

GregLocock,

In one of his books, J.E.Gordon claimed that riveted boilers were better sealed than welded ones.

How sensitive are rivets to workmanship?

--
JHG

 

[GregLocock]

I suppose a visual inspection is easier than for welds. I have no industrial experience with rivets, I'd guess I've bashed 5 rivets in my whole life, and never done a heated one. Maybe that's where the better boiler sealing comes from but it is an odd statement.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[JAE]

I had an old steel framed fabrication facility that I did some bridge crane upgrades to a few years ago. The building was constructed in the 1910's or 1920's.

One of our older engineers came up to me after I'd asked around about rivets and evaluating them.
He said that one of the ways he was taught to "test" or "inspect" a rivet was to grab a nice ball peen hammer and strike the head of the rivet sideways (perpendicular to the rivet shank axis).
He said that if the sound from the impact was dull then the rivet needed replacing but if the impact created a PING sound then it was good.

The above doesn't sound much like an ASTM or ANSI spec but apparently it worked.

 

[LittleInch]

They used a similar technique checking for cracks in locomotive wheels. They were called Wheel tappers"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeltapper

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[hokie66]

Nostalgia. My Dad was, for a time, a rivet catcher on Liberty ship construction in Baltimore. But then, that was before I was born.

 

[JohnRBaker]

My wife's mother was a 'Rosie the Riveter' during the war, working on a bomber assembly line in Detroit. She still had her 'handbook' with all the rivet specs and description of the tools and procedures for preparing and inspecting a joint (I might still have it somewhere).

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[zeusfaber]

My Dad was, for a time, a rivet catcher on Liberty ship construction in Baltimore. But then, that was before I was born.

That made my ears prick up since, like many people, I thought the Liberty ships were all-welded. So I went and looked, found "Revisiting (Some of) the Lasting Impacts of the Liberty Ships via a Metallurgical Analysis of Rivets from the SS “John W. Brown”" and saw fifteen minutes of my morning vanish in an unexpectedly fascinating read.

A.