Lazy tongs are the ONLY ones !!

Lazy tongs are easy if there is room to use them. My fingers are arthritic and can only squeeze a few, whatever the size, and I bought a pneumatic riveter from Axminster tools. It came with a comprehensive kit of spares, new jaws, o rings and diaphragms, plus all the tools needed to work on it. It makes pop riveting a doddle.

Lazy tongs, depending on the access of course.

You may notice that the lazy tongs nozzle will reach further into a restricted area, but the whole machine may be too long for full extension in a cramped enclosure. Your choice, dependent on your needs.

I usually use my lazy tongs but I also have a Spiralux riveting tool which is handy for the few occasions when space is limited or there are a lot of small rivets. The old kingklik item would only get used if I needed a smaller one and couldn’t find the spiralux (that’s if I knew where the kingklik was to be found, anyway🙂 ).

I have set many hundreds of pop rivets, having spent 22 years in the Air Force as an Aircraft Technician, my recommendation would be a pneumatic riveter as first choice but you state it needs to be mechanical so I would go for Lazy Tongs. As an aside I recently had a job that required a small number of pop rivets to be used, I opted for economy and obtained a cheap hand riveter, that was a serious error, it fell to pieces after only 6 rivets, if you are using Monel rivets you will need a fair bit of force to set them so lazy tongs will be substantial and your best bet. Dave W