[TheForge] rivets

[Howell Steve]

I like rivets.
That said, I feel your pain in trying to get the perfect button head through whatever means possible.
Manufacturers spent the better part of a century trying to perfect it too. 
Rivet trivia:
Have you seen the construction picture of the guy on the Empire state building testing rivets with a special hammer? He would ding them and tell if they we're duds or not by the tone. Early, but effective quality control.

Anyway- I've learned to love the hand finished look since I too have struggled with getting the 'perfect' look every time. What I have concentrated on is having the right set to cradle the button head I am trying to preserve. After a couple hundred on this latest project, I've gotten pretty good at forming a nice 4 sided pyramid head with little effort. I've used a gun too and you can wind up doing more damage than good if you rock the set back and forth and scar the base metal.
I posted some pictures of a riveted rail I made recently in the 'work' section of the site. 

Steve Howell
Seattle


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---