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A Riveting Experience
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Categories: Jewelry; Projects and equipment

Word count/read time: 423 words; 2 minutes

Rivets are an incredibly strong mechanical connector and a great aesthetic for jewelry. Commercial sterling and fine silver rivets are quite limited. Besides, using them means your piece can no longer legally be called handmade. Sadly, most sellers ignore the law and call their stuff handmade regardless.

Handmade matters to me which is why I make my own rivets. Shaping, filing, and sanding drain production time. The consistency was meh so it often involved making extras to get a respectable, matching pair. It's jewelry so all components have to be worthy.

I looked at rivet-making tools and the solution was obvious: Make a better version of my prototype. It will make every size rivet I've ever used and a few extras. Some people will say it is overkill - overkill was, like, ten steps ago! Seriously, it should last my lifetime and then some so its annualized cost is quite palatable.

 
The drawplate makes wire a fraction oversized in some diameters, enough to throw a hissy.
 
Finish work on the rivets is minimal. Removable plates ensure the perfect rivet head diameter. The head profile can be domed/rounded, flat, conical, or have other features - just make a punch and it's done. Not including rivet length or fancy add-ons, there are scores of possible combinations. Some quick calculations remove any guesswork about how much wire is required for a given head diameter and thickness for each of the five wire diameters at any finished length.

While I could have made this with many do-overs and a tetris of separate pieces, mostly the pros flexed their muscles. It was slowly transformed traveling to and from the machine shops: manual machining, wire EDM, then CNCed to final specs. First it was worth pennies as scrap, then $75, then $250, then even more. Much more. That doesn't include the pending graphite plate(s) for making the pre-rivets.

The wire hole diameter was supposed to be tight. The drawplate makes wire a fraction oversized in some diameters, enough to throw a hissy. I'd prefer not sanding the wire but detuning a precision tool to accommodate an imperfect drawplate ain't gonna happen. Also, if this drawplate breaks and the new one is a tad off the other way then my modified tool would be sloppy. Noted: Drawplates are a lot cheaper to replace.

Would producing or selling this tool make sense, ignoring that I'd be outfitting my competition with tools I slaved so dearly for? Quite a conundrum even if such a small market would justify it. Besides, few people get excited about making a bazillion different sizes. Maybe I'll just sell handmade rivets instead?


Posted by M: May 20, 2021


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