So my shallow water boat is one that my grandpa gave me, a Cherokee aluminum 1957 model. I've always known this boat was as tough as nails, but I had no idea how truly tough it is. The wood in the transom has been rotten for about a decade but I just keep on fishing because there's no flex back there and it looks like a giant pain to replace the wood (I've replaced transoms before but the metal reinforcements on this boat are crazy strong). I saw on another forum where a guy had just replaced the transom on a crestliner deep v with 115 horsepower and I jokingly posted that he should help me with mine next. Sure enough he sent me a PM and said bring it over. He starts cutting the heads off these rivets and trying to pound them out and drill them out. 1.5 hours later we haven't got the first one to move more than a millimeter and there's 30-40 of them back there holding it together. He makes a comment that he has never seen rivets like that and asks me how many have come out since 1957. I answered one and he was completely shocked. He said his 90s bass tracker has lost a dozen or more. He says this must be the rivets that hold airplanes together. So I snap a pic and send it to my buddy in the air Force and he says "oh yeah those are cherry Max structure rivets and they are a huge PITA. They are on the planes I'm working on right now." Confirmed: my boat is as strong as an airplane. I also talked to an old timer that said a lot of companies that built planes in WWII switched to building boats after the war. Transom rebuild might get finished by 2022........ You can't even disassemble this boat with angle grinder dremmel metal punches and titanium drill bits.......

 

Also: the original floatation is 100 percent intact under all 3 bench seats. This boat used to sit tied up to our dock 24/7 and was always full of rain. When I was a kid I would bail it out about halfway then start fishing. The phrase "they don't make them like they used to" is an understatement in this case 

 

So my next thought is try a smaller drill bit and just work on it for days and days. They aren't cupped so the bit kept jumping off. Any suggestions??

Chisel the wood out around the rivets then use a sawzall with a construction blade. 

24 minutes ago, Hower08 said:

Chisel the wood out around the rivets then use a sawzall with a construction blade. 

Another option is a cutting wheel on your hand drill. This is what I used to cut 1/4-20 bolts flush after installing them to mount my rod rack on my canoe.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Forney-3-in-x-1-32-in-x-1-4-in-Shank-Mandrel-Cut-Off-Wheel-Kit-5-Piece-71798/206428562

We cut the heads off easily with angle grinder but they won't knock out . The second picture down is the rivets after we chiseled the wood away and cut the heads off

Follow this procedure to remove cherrymax rivets. www.cherryaerospace.com/product/video/rivetremoval

You need remove the locking device with a drill.

 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, Fishstalker001 said:

Follow this procedure to remove cherrymax rivets. www.cherryaerospace.com/product/video/rivetremoval

You need remove the locking device with a drill.

 

 

 

 

Awesome man! Thanks. We knew they were locked in somehow 

Update! 
 

got all those $)@%#£ things out of the transom. A hammer and flathead screwdriver did most of the damage, the carbide tip bit was key in getting started but it wouldn’t really drill them out neatly, made some boo boos. Slicing and punching/prying made the cleanest exit for most of them. 
 

I do not think those are not Cherry Max rivets. Cherry Max rivets are essentially pop rivets on steroids. They are a type of blind rivet, meaning you cannot access the off side of the material being riveted with a bucking bar or a rivet squeezer. 

34 minutes ago, BrianMDTX said:

I do not think those are not Cherry Max rivets. Cherry Max rivets are essentially pop rivets on steroids. They are a type of blind rivet, meaning you cannot access the off side of the material being riveted with a bucking bar or a rivet squeezer. 

I’ve got no clue what they are, but they are overkill hahaha

18 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I’ve got no clue what they are, but they are overkill hahaha

Were they solid or hollow? A boat built in the 50s could have used rivets you’d likely never see today. Like icebox rivets. 

10 hours ago, BrianMDTX said:

Were they solid or hollow? A boat built in the 50s could have used rivets you’d likely never see today. Like icebox rivets. 

Solid, very solid 

Wow!  That boat is a tank!

On 7/18/2019 at 10:24 AM, MN Fisher said:

Another option is a cutting wheel on your hand drill.

I'll just add this: be careful.  I'm missing a chunk out my front tooth using one.  Heluva kick back when they catch.  It adds character, though.

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Solid, very solid 

Yeah, I thought so. So not a Cherry Max. They looked like bucked or squeezed rivets to me.

20 minutes ago, BrianMDTX said:

Yeah, I thought so. So not a Cherry Max. They looked like bucked or squeezed rivets to me.

I’ve beat the heck out of that boat since I was about 6 years old. Got it stuck on a waterfall once! To my knowledge only one rivet has ever been knocked out since it rolled off the assembly line 

They built things to last back then!

For anyone who has to deal with CherryMax rivet removal, it's not as difficult as it seems. There's a steel retaining ring that's contained inside the head.

 

You need to grind the head down until the ring is visible (it'll be obvious), and then carefully grind a tiny bit more until the ring pops out. Once that happens, the core can be punched out fairly easily. With the core removed, you can drill into the head until it pops free and tap the rest of the shank out.

 

I have installed and removed thousands of them, and haven't found an easier method. Well, that's not entirely true... If you have pneumatic rivet shaver, it can be used to take the entire head off the rivet, at the expense of the cutter. Not ideal, but extremely fast.

getting there! Still just making sure everything fits. Here’s some before and after (or after and before the way I posted )