Rivet Placement

Locating the Rivet Holes

The easiest way is to use a "hole finder" which can be purchased from several online aircraft supply shops, among other places:

- http://www.browntool.com/productselect.asp?ProductID=203

- http://www.ustool.com/usstore.asp?WCI=wciCategory&WCE=63

- http://www.yardstore.com/index.cfm?Action=ViewCategory&Category=81
 

Many people have chosen to build their own from tweezers (or old hacksaw blades), machine screws and nuts.  I have made mine out of a scrap strip of sheet metal.  One person has even used a pair of ice tongs!

Its function should be self evident from the pictures, but you would use this by locating the trunion and undrilled receiver together with C-Clamps or in a vise, and forking the screw side of the tweezers inside the already-drilled trunion.  The hole side of the tweezers would be located outside the receiver shell.  By locating the screw "peg" into the trunion rivet hole, you can mark the location to drill on the outside of the uncut receiver.  This can achieve a relatively precise amount of accuracy.

There are some alignment "jigs" that have pre-drilled holes within which you are supposed to insert your drill bit which are somewhat modeled after some AR BIY jigs that achieve the same task.  These jigs, however precisely built, can not accommodate an average build because factory drill holes are *NOT* located into a default position (unlike an AR which has precise hole locations).  Therefore, I can not recommend those kinds of "drill-through" jigs for the average AK build.  Combine this with the comparatively high cost ($40 for a jig vs. $3 for a tweezer "mod") and I can say that the tweezer mod will best serve an AK builder as well or better than anything else.

More close-up pics of the "tweezer jig" that I made: