Rivnuts are potential replacements for platenuts or nutplates, as they are sometimes called. I bought a boat load of rivnuts of every size and shape I could find, hoping that I could use them in places that were very difficult to get to with a rivet squeezer or rivet gun.

What I found was that the rivnuts can be useful, but in most of the places I wanted to use them, they didn't help.

Basically rivnuts can be used in places where you can't get to the other side. Of course, you can always use pop rivets to hold a nutplate in place if you can't get to the other side with the rivet equipment, but if you *totally* can't get to the other side, then a rivnut is appropriate.

Problems with rivnuts are:

• you have to drill a pretty big hole to put in the rivnut
• you have to do a lot of countersinking to get a flush rivnut
• round rivnuts can possibly rotate since there is not much holding them steady in the hole
• notched rivnuts require a special tool to punch a shaped hole
• rivnuts require special tools to insert them, and these tools are expensive (unless you can find them on E-bay)
• all the special tools that I could find are quite large, and don't allow you to install rivnuts in any type of corner or tight space

The best thing about rivnuts is that they are fast to install. You only have to drill one (big) hole, stick the rivnut on the tool, and squeeze the install lever. Very fast, and easy. I just wish they were easy to install in tight spaces.