Those of you familiar with pressing out rivets especially on metal kits will know that the action of the formation of the rivet has a tendency to distort the metal slightly usually resulting a in a slight curl or wave along the line of rivets. Like those below

In between applying paint to Mossy’s wagons I also picked up another unfinished model which I initially was going to cheat one but decided against it and as a result needed a number of riveted strips with rivets at various different spacings. The rivets were pressed along the edge of a sheet of 0.25mm (10 thou) nickel sheet with my Leakey Rivet press and then cut of with the guillotine. it’s a very satisfying process but as described it does leave the rivet strips with a bit of a curl.

Until today I have for a number of years ‘set’ the rivets using some jewellers stone setting tools after seeing the technique demonstrated on Western thunder by Peter Dunn.

These are two of the set which I use most often and I have fitted semi permanent (bonded with loctite 638) handles to them. As they come they have a wooden handle with a collet nut that allows you to change the size. To use them press out your rivets then place on a firm surface and go over them with the tool placing it over each rivet and a small tap with a light hammer sets the rivet and the surrounding metal.

This is fine and as I say I have used the method for a number of years the only minor downside is that the dome in the end of the tool is quite shallow and I have had it squash the rivets sometimes and the edge is quite reasonably sharp so if you don’t get it quite vertical it can leave a slight half moon mark around the rivet.

While pressing out rivets this morning it struck me that a few minutes on the lathe could improve upon the tool.

Using more of the steel rod recovered from waste toner cartridges I faced off the end and then having measured my most used rivet size I drilled a .93mm hole in the end of the rod and then turned it down to allow a flat bottom to not cut into the sheet but narrow enough to allow passing between close fitting lines of rivets.
I have recently made a second punch for my rivet press to allow the slightly bigger rivets on Connoisseur kits to be punched more accurately so I made a second ‘rivet set’ to set those. That has a 1.3mm hole in it. The recycled printer rods machine lovely but I have noted a tendency to rust where they have been machined so I heated the machined ends to blacken them in oil.