Looking at all the rivets to be pressed out I decided that I would finally get around to doing something that I had been promising myself for years. That’s to make a more comfortable handle for the GW Models rivet press. Those who own the smaller of the two models will understand where I am coming from. The bigger 7mm/Gauge 1 version has a round end to the handle the smaller version just has a rectangular bar which gets mighty uncomfortable when pressing a lot of rivets.

My solution was to drill a 13mm hole in a piece of 20mm acetal rod and tap it onto the rectangular bar.

So simple but so much more comfortable.

It didn’t make pressing the rivets out any quicker but it saved the hand, some grief.

Ordinarily I would have taken the slight curl out of the sheet by setting the rivets using a jeweller’s stone setting tool, a technique picked up from Peter Dunn. However, because I plan to roll this and the curl is in the right orientation, I left it as is.

To roll the smokebox with the rivets embossed I backed it with a piece of card from a biscuit packet (Tesco Finest Chocolate Gingers – other sources of card are available).

Once I filed the etching cusp off the rear former it dropped straight in.