IN RANGE inc said:
Second ,Sidecarnutz with your attitude I think you need to find another forum to visit!! Your home hobbiest knowledge SHOWS. NO factory ever dimpled receivers prior to installing rivets. The taperd shank on the rivet pulls the receiver into the hole. Also, did any of your customers come to a public forum and comment on "you denying problems and letting your ego get in the way of doing good work?" There are ways to handle things and you appearantly don't understand them. But what the hell, this isn't your rifle, is it?
I'm a home hobbiest doing my own gunsmithing. I also have spent decades as a nuclear engineering tech. I have had way more engineering training than most gunsmiths ever see. After my legs were crushed I supplemented my earnings by doing bike upholstery. But I am still a welder, machinist and mechanical tech with alot of cross training in electrical engineering to boot. The sidecar body in my avatar was hand hammered from 16 and 18 gage steel. No English wheel was used. Built from scratch. I have experience working metals.
And my opinion on those rivets stands. That one especially looks awful. I can't believe you are calling me out on this. How can you defend that rivet? It is indefensible. :roll: But I am glad you'll be fixing it for the owner. That is the right thing to do.
Had that rifle been delivered to my FFL for me, I'd have contacted you right away and sent it back for re-work. I do try to be patient when stuff happens. I have had a few problems here with even the best vendors here that I have dealt with. But I take the problems to them first to be fixed. I would only comment negatively here IF the vendor didn't fix the problem. Compliment in public and complain in private is the best way to go. I have posted many kudos to the business's here I have dealt with that did a great job. And so far they are batting 1000 in fixing problems that have come up too.
But in this case the customer seems to have complained here before contacting you. That happens. I've had it happen to me too. But I didn't make excuses for poor work. I admitted to the mistake and fixed it.
My own work is frequently discussed on public bike forums. I have no paid advertising. I get my business from word of mouth and folks finding the little free site I run on Yahoo to show my work. So when I do mess up, I work to make it up to the customer. And yes my mistakes do get discussed when they happen. It's a small community that I serve. And they talk about my overnight warranty service and overnight FedEx shipping I use too. Many customers I had to do warranty work for when the problem was in my craftsmanship got free leather tool pouches back with their seat for their inconvienience. In my book, that's good customer service.
Just how does the tapered shank pull the rivet into the hole? I was under the impression the rivet head die holds it in place against the receiver as the shank then gets squeezed. The head must be firmly in place and the receiver dimpled for it all to work well together. Unless you have a tool that presses the rivet in hard to dimple the steel as it is set, the tapered head will just be floating above the surface and not doing its job as it is in that photo. I can't picture how a tool like that would work as the leverage is all wrong. The receiver could get bent vice dimpled. Especially heat treated steel like NDS uses. It is tough stuff.
I have no knowledge of the how the factory accomplishes it. I'll grant that you know more about it than I do. But your factory techniques seem to be lacking on that rivet. How many rivets like that does the Bulgy factory put out? There is a disparity here in worksmanship.
My experience is with my home made tooling and with my AKB tooling. If I have a rivet go bad while I am setting it, I remove it and start over.
I made the comment on ego's because that person was taking the problem personally IMO and seemed to have hurt feelings about it. If I am wrong on that, I apologize. The written word here with no face to face communication can be limiting. But I stand on that comment. If home builders like me can pick apart problems like this when they are posted, then you are shipping your problems out to customers. That means more work for you later to fix. And then stuff like this on public forums happens.
My original comment was that those rivets were poor work. I stand by that. That's a comment on the professionalism of how those rivets were set. It's not a personal attack. I see nothing wrong with calling a poor rivet a poor rivet.
I am heading out to a sidecar rally tomorrow for a few days. I'll check the board when I get back. If there is anything else you wish to talk to me about on this I'll be happy to respond then. Have a good weekend.