Recently, I’ve been kind of unhappy with my economy squeezer that I bought from the Yard. (I think Avery sells the same squeezer).
The squeezer is great for the majority of tasks on the empennage, but it only has one yoke, and I really need a no-hole yoke for some of the tighter-access areas at the end of ribs and such.
So, to buy a no-hole yoke, it looks like I’m going to have to buy a new hand squeezer (insert long back and forth about pneumatic squeezers here. I’m okay with hand-squeezing for the whole airplane, but I want one that can exchange yokes with a pneumatic squeezer if I decide to get one in the future).
So, for no small chunk of change (thanks, savings!) I got Cleveland’s Main Squeeze model 22 and the 4″ Thin-Nose Pneu. Yoke. I won’t be able to use this yoke for dimpling (still have the economy squeezer for that), but this will be great for squeezing rivets.
Aug 27, 2010 Update:
My new squeezer showed up. The actual squeezer is unbelievably light, and the yoke is unbelievably heavy. Even before installing the yoke, I can tell this is a much higher quality tool than my “economy” squeezer.
This should give you an idea of the difference in quality between the two.
In addition to being easier to squeeze, I am most impressed with the yoke. While I was squeezing rivets with the smaller 3″ yoke, sometimes the yoke would “give” a little. I can only describe this as the “c” part of the yoke opening ever so slightly. This had the result of pulling the top of the yoke back just a little, sometimes shifting the shop head a little to one side, or in some cases, sliding the flush set along the manufactured head side during squeezing. Most of the rivets turned out okay, but I no longer have this problem with the new yoke.
Here’s a picture of SRS (shifting rivet syndrome).
Bravo, Cleveland.