bluehills3149

Here's my B17 with the Ebay rivets I posted above. I found the rivets too long so cut off a couple mm using my cable cutters. But I had a hard time peening them. I do not have any rivet tools so used bits of steel mounted in my vice and punches but the rivets would want to bend over rather than deform in a straight column. I got the in but I'm not that happy with the results (but it looks OK I suppose). Second issue was the tension bolt broke. The original seems to use some odd thread (Whitworth perhaps?) so I could not find a substitute in my (small) collection of bolts. I ended up using a front hub bolt (hollow quick release style) and rammed a filed down hex head screw in the end. The hex head makes adjustment easier too. The shouldered screw I made from a front wheel cone and put it in a drill and filed down the bearing race to a hard shoulder. Not sure it is ideal as a coarse thread is stronger than fine but I used what I had on hand. I also found I could not fit an original length bolt as the leather was too tight and I ended up remaking the bolt in the pic to be shorter by about 10mm and even then it was a tight fit and the screw needs no tension. Perhaps the leather will stretch with use?