Question around rebucking

Hello all,

I have a 14 ft jon boat that has some leaking rivets. Since I don't use the boat with an outboard or in rough conditions, I thought I would try to rebuck the leaky rivets before taking the next step to replace them.

My question is what works well on the back side of the rivet to absorb the impact? I have a ball peen hammer to hit the flat side of the rivets.

I may end up replacing the rivets but we'll see. I would like to try rebucking first though.

Thanks!

If you can't get them to seal with a single light hit, replace them. Re-bucking loose rivets with more than a light hit or two will do nothing but spider crack the metal around the rivet. A new rivet expands to fill the hole before the head peens over.

Once an old rivet has gotten to the point that it leaks, the hole has wallowed out a pretty good bit, and since the head is already peened over, any new hits will not expand the rivet in the hole - only tighten the heads up, and stress the adjacent metal.

If a rivet is just seeping or slowly leaking then rebucking works real good. As said, if the rivet is stretched then rebucking might not work and replacement is necessary.

When I rebuck rivets, I use a 4 pound hammer on the head and a 2 pound hammer with a punch to set them. I usually hit them pretty hard with two good whacks, creating a flat spot on the head of the rivet from the 4 pound backing hammer. This is one way to tell if a rivet has been rebucked or not and this is kind of handy especially if you need to go over the same area later down the road.
I like to use a large punch to keep from denting the boat from a missed blow. Try hammering rivets in a tight area without one and you'll find out just what I mean.

On the bottom of the boat it works much better with two people. Work out which direction to go, get into a rhythm and you can cover a good size area in just a few minutes. Safety glasses and earplugs help.

Other methods use an air hammer and/or a bucking bar which I don't like.

Thanks so much. The punch sounds like the ticket. I was wondering how I was going to accomplish hitting the flat side consistently without hitting the ribs.

I would prefer to avoid replacing them if I can, mainly because I have never done anything like that, and I am not equipped with an air compressor and would like to keep the costs to a minimum.

From what I have heard replacing them isn't real difficult and long term is probably the way to go, but like I said not having done it before gives me a little pause.

when i did mine, i used an old brake rotor for an anvil and a 2# sledge for the hammer