Making Rivets

I determined that I needed 88 rivets for my refinery piece and I wasn't about to cut them all by hand. So I found an easier way. Someone in another forum had mentioned using a leather punch, so I set out to find one.

Materials and Tools

• Tandy Rotary Hole Punch. This is a leather punch that you can find at Michael's or any comparable arts and crafts store for $8.99. It has 6 different punch sizes.
• Homemade rivet extractor. I made mine out of a 4" piece of coat hanger wire. You'll need this to push your rivets out of the punch. ($0.05)
• An old credit card. It's plastic that's just the right thickness. (Being able to actually use one of those sample cards they send you in the mail - priceless)

Step-by-Step

Grab your spare credit card and use your leather punch just like you would a hole punch, to punch out a rivet. Give the punch a little twist as you remove it. Now, push your extractor from the other end and push the plastic rivet out of the punch. Cup your hand underneath the punch or your rivet will go flying to points unknown. I probably have a ton of rivets lying all over my kitchen floor.

Here's the punch with the extrator inserted through the other end.

A used Starbucks card gave up it's life so that my refinery could have rivets. As you can see, a single card yields a lot of rivets.

Once you have your stack of rivets, simply glue them on with some model glue and paint away. Here's what the end product looks like.

Notes

Last updated	7/9/08
Author	Michael Kan
Pre-requisites	None
Related Articles	None