Hard to believe I watched the whole video and enjoyed it, more captivating than a vikings loss 
It might be easier to understand if you have one of those cheap pliers with a bolt and a nut instead of a rivet. Take it apart and take a look see. OK, maybe I’ll do that myself.
I have a cheap Chinese pair of pliers. Maybe @bing and I can both do that and compare pictures on the thread.
Its a mystery. I took mine apart and its just a bolt with a lock nut. You can tighten it as much as you want and the two pieces still will rotate, although harder.
I cut mine apart. Well, scored and broke it apart. Cheap Chinese junk. (not sure how I got these)
The center “rivet-like” part that holds it together is one piece with one side of the pliers, the other side had a chamfered hole. So imagine a post coming off one leg of the pliers, the second is slipped on and the end is pounded into the chamfer and ground flush. Nothing else there. No bushing, spacer or anything to act as a slip, just the clearance between the post and the plier piece. Evidently the clearance is maintained by controlling the pound-over or by heat expansion or a bit of both.
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Yes, and with the pliers shown in the video, the rivet is loose and fits a chamfer on both sides. I have both types but the better ones seem to be the ones that are hammered over on both sides and ground flush. In the video, they mention soaking in a rust inhibitor that also acts as a joint lubricant…
Thanks for this conversation. I’ve wondered about this myself and never went the next step to figure it out. Now I know another fact that I can bore my non-mechanical minded friends with.
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Ah ha. Maybe heat is it. In the video they heat the rivet while pressing it down. Maybe when it cools then it provides a few thousandths of clearance. I dunno.
It’s not a press fit rivet in the first place, it simply slips into place and they forge the ends into shape.
The traditional rivet gets fatter in the middle when the ends are pounded down. The whole thing is stressed to yeild. That’s how it locks the 2 pieces together.
If the end is hollow and then the rivet is essentially “rolled” over, then the middle isn’t stressed enough to expand it. But the ends look different. It would leave a “dimple”
Yep, I agree with everything you said. I think that expansion has already been accounted for in the sizing of the rivet center section. It slips easily into the bores of the tool sections prior to forming. Perhaps the dual chamfers relieve some of this ballooning effect as they take up the majority of the material being reformed?
Excellent, answers the question, and a whole lot more! Thanks.
I found another set of pliers in my tool box the other day so I thought I’d take a look. I could definitely see the outline of a rivet on the fixed side. Those are cheapo offshore-made pliers, as I recall I paid $2 for them, new. Yeah, they’re about as smooth opening and closing as you’d expect w/a $2 pair … lol … The ones I referred to in the OP however are good quality pliers . There’s no outline of a rivet on the fixed side visible on those, making me think the “rivet” for the better quality pair is cast as part of that half of the pliers.