Word.ws English Dictionary

rivet gun

rivet gun noun: an adjustable-impulse pneumatic hammer, fitted with a rivet set which matches the shape of the factory head of a solid rivet, used by a riveter (or gunner) to impact the factory head of that rivet (which has been heated if necessary to soften it), while a heavy bucking bar or similar is held against the bucktail of the rivet, upsetting it to form the field head.

rivet gun: an adjustable-impulse pneumatic hammer, fitted with a rivet set which matches the shape of the...
Image: Alfred T. Palmer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

rivet gun (plural rivet guns)

  1. An adjustable-impulse pneumatic hammer, fitted with a rivet set which matches the shape of the factory head of a solid rivet, used by a riveter (or gunner) to impact the factory head of that rivet (which has been heated if necessary to soften it), while a heavy bucking bar or similar is held against the bucktail of the rivet, upsetting it to form the field head.
  2. A ratchetting lever mechanism which is attached to the frangible mandrel passing through a typical blind rivet, which when pulled upsets the bucktail to form the field head of the rivet without needing access to the field-head side of the construction.

Forms of rivet gun

pluralrivet guns

Questions about rivet gun

What does rivet gun mean?
Rivet gun means an adjustable-impulse pneumatic hammer, fitted with a rivet set which matches the shape of the factory head of a solid rivet, used by a riveter (or gunner) to impact the factory head of that rivet (which has been heated if necessary to soften it), while a heavy bucking bar or similar is held against the bucktail of the rivet, upsetting it to form the field head.
What part of speech is rivet gun?
Rivet gun is a noun.
What is the plural of rivet gun?
The plural of rivet gun is rivet guns.

Words near rivet gun in the dictionary

  1. rivest
  2. Rivests
  3. rivet
  4. rivet counter
  5. rivet counters
  6. rivet gun
  7. rivet guns
  8. rivet hearth
  9. rivet hearths
  10. rivet knob
  11. rivet knobs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rivet gun (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “rivet gun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rivet_gun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.