Hehr window rivets

Hi Jim,

Are you just rescreening all the side windows or the front window set or both?

When I redid my front window assembly for riveting, I had the help of a friend's son who was an aircraft mechanic and one of his jobs was riveting. So, I was able to ask him to come over and help with any solid rivets. He used a rivet gun, compressor, Clecos, Cleco pliers and a series of different bucks to buck the rivet against depending on it's location. I believe the type of rivet you are looking for is a semi tubular rivet with a truss head aka flush rivets. I had bought a series of small rivets I thought were the right size, but he came over with an assortment and we used some of mine and some of his to finish the job.

Prior to using my friend's son, I was calling around to machine shops to see if they could do riveting for me or even airplane repair shops for help. Learning to rivet has an investment curve as well as a learning curve if you want to learn. People use the pop rivets because they are in most instances easy to install and reasonably easy to size. The tail of the rivet does stick out, though.

I presented a little of the experience with post #51 on this page vintagetrailertalk.freeforums.net/thread/3598/andy-57-westerner-restoration-thread?page=4
John Palmer is the rivet guy around here. He’s the one with the most experience with riveting.

I used the pop rivets in the Hehr side windows as well as the rear window.  Up front, is where we used the rivet gun, not on the other windows. The entire front window set frame had loose rivets and we had to basically reattach the pieces of the outer frame to stiffen it up. That necissitated the use of flush revits for that application.

Finally, here is what it looks like to use the pop rivets to attach the vertical support to the back frame of a smaller Hehr window. (Click on the photo and once in Flickr, click again to magnify.) This is from the front side (interior side of the window frame)


Here is the tail side of the rivets showing on the exterior side of the back frame. Note also the use of the awl to poke through the new screening.


Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth. The pop rivets as I show them being used are just fine in this application. No one will see the tail end of the pop rivet (if that’s a concern) or know that it was originally a flush rivet. The front window assembly is different. That’s where we used the rivet gun.

Rod

Thanks Techdad

Yes that exactly the type of window we have .

We will be replacing all the window screens in the camper


Where did you get the screen from?