Originally Posted by
obuckler
First I greatly admire the work on exhibit here.
I had a nose piece crack on my B17n and I ordered a new one and the brooks rivets. After I got it all I decided to go with copper rivets as above. Yes they were a pain to drive home and honestly I had to do two of them over. (It helped immensely to shorten the river to a bit over 1/8 inch extra in length.) But t I think the hammered look comes off real nice. The sides of the nose are hardest. For those a steel bar mounted sideways in my sturdy bench vise worked. Not as clean and elegant on the underside though.
Those look great!
For an anvil, I use a cutoff I-beam that I got from a metal fabricator in Trenton. To them it's scrap metal, I gave the foreman a sixpack of beer for it. You're really supposed to put the head of the rivet against the anvil and peen out the other end with a punch; but in a pinch I've found I can do it backwards: that is, put the corner of the I-beam inside the nose piece and beat on the head of the rivet. It's not an ideal solution... but it works.
Another useful tool for the side rivets of the nose is a railroad spike. The offset of the head is enough to get around the bend.
