National Aeronca Association Bulletin Board

I purchased a Harbor Freight Pneumatic rivet gun to ease the job of setting all the pop rivets in my wings. During testing I discovered it emits a spray of oil every time the trigger is pulled.

Of course this happened after I destroyed the packing materials it came in.

Paul
Salome, AZ

As my younger brother would say when any piece of equipment fails "What do you expect? It's only human". I have a bit of a problem with my Harbor Frieght remote (bore scope type) camera as it only shows the picture now and then and basically when I don't need it so now I have a fairly expensive 'bend a light'. But what should I expect..........

Mike

Mine did the same thing. I was surprised because I had used a borrowed one a few years ago and it worked great and was free of oil mist.

Jerry in San Antonio

As far as I am concerned they are one time use tools. I buy them if I need it for one use because after that they are generally done. if you need a good rivet gun I would suggest going to ebay and buying an old Cleco brand gun. You might pay a few bucks more, and it might not be pretty, but they work well and last forever.

Paul
I too had the oil spray after following the tools instruction sheet. Empty the oil the instructions told you to add and pull a couple dozen rivets and the spray will leave. Finished my wings and the gun still works fine

The bottom canister of my pneumatic rivet gun literally blew-up in my hand. Oil went everywhere but no injury or damage to my work surface.

Dennis

hangerash wrote:Paul
I too had the oil spray after following the tools instruction sheet. Empty the oil the instructions told you to add and pull a couple dozen rivets and the spray will leave. Finished my wings and the gun still works fine

Good tip Thanks

A typical story about harbor fright tools. I am in the sheet metal business, years ago we had a project that required thousands of pop rivets. Our pneumatic gun quit right when we started. Out of desperation, I ran to HF and bought two, assuming the first one would crap out. It didn't, and to my amazement worked for a couple more years. We probably ran 100k rivets with it. When it finally did quit, I got the second one out of the box and put it in service. In broke three days later. Go figure!

Brian Walker
7 AC/DC flyin' everyday!

I have put about 4000 rivets through my $40 Harbor Freight riveter and it still works great.

The days when you get what you pay for as far as tools go are pretty much in the past. I had Ryobi, Dewalt, Makita etc tools in the past and sometimes the cheap stuff outlasts them. I buy cheap tools when I need to get a job done because I prefer to spend my money on flying and airplane parts, not because I want to impress my friends with my tool collection.

Takes some luck, and maybe some knowledge. I have four of their small cast iron drill presses - one in each hangar and two in the model train shop. I have drilled tens of thousands of holes, and have not found any problems at all. Fifty bucks each, and very well spent.

On the other hand, bought a belt sander, and it doesn't have any power at all - and the cheap spray gun was simply junk. And do not buy that beautiful but flimsy maple workbench!

That's the drill press on the left, and the useless workbench under the not-so-useless South Bend.