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.
Here are the two separate purchases from Cleveland.
Ready for ACTION!
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).
Big difference in quality (pronounced "price reflects this") and operation.
Bravo, Cleveland.
Andrew's RV-7 Build Log 