[TheForge] riveting, Greene and Greene

[Steve howell]

Andy, The best description I've read so far of the process consists of one page in my old Machinery's handbook ca. 1953. Their tables are also spot on for calculating stick-out for getting perfect heads on the upset end. That came as a surprise to me as most of us, I seem to recall, use the one and a half times the diameter of the rivet for stickout. In reality it's more like 1 1/2 D + 1/4".
A lot of smiths could care less about machine driven heads but it's something I've been striving towards for quite awhile. Jaycee rivet has plenty of big rivets in stock. Next up are some 2 1/2" X 7/8. The little suckers are 3/4 of a pound a piece.

One place where you still see a lot of steel rivets are in high vibration areas, like car and truck frames. 

On the structural engineering side, the 'modern' consensus is that hot driven rivets don't develop tension because, I quote "...the rivet has no way to develop tension..."  This is from a PhD at AISC, the institute that basically governs steel construction in this country. I found otherwise; two 3/8 X 2" bars riveted on one end with a 3/4" 1018 rivet took 1500 foot lbs of force to get to 'slip'. No tension, my ass! 

Bruce,
I think Andy hit it on the head, it's not that there is little ironwork in the Greene's work but that the design accents make one think in different ways. There is (or was) a gate at the Gamble house which mirrors the same lines in the architecture. I've only a picture of it in one of my books.
Another master of the arts and crafts ethic was Charles Rennie Mackintosh who I have Jack Andrews to thank for getting me the book Iron and Metalwork at the Glasgow school of art. The blacksmiths had a strike because they said his designs could not be executed. They were.

Steve Howell
Seattle
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