Riviting - Cold Connections

Cold Connections with Riveting

You don’t need to be strong like Rosie the Riveter to use rivets in your jewelry. Aren’t you glad? You also don’t need a gun – I’m talking about a rivet gun, of course. Whenever I first mentioned riveting at the dinner table, the guys thought they knew just what I was talking about. They knew how to rivet! They had no idea what I really wanted to do.

As you likely already know, riveting is a means for connecting two or more pieces together without using heat. It’s a great technique to have in your bag of tricks, especially if you do not solder, although many torch pros use riveting for decoration or apply rivets when heat is not appropriate. Once you have spent a bit of time working with rivets, you will begin to recognize them in many more designs.

Starting from the left, the photo of samples shows a wire rivet connecting a bead through a flower on to a copper disc that was given a blue patina. This is a good example of a design for which heat would not work. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to heat a bead and you would ruin the patina on the disc by using heat. The top middle example is a simple purchased finding riveted through another finding and on to a disc. The example on the right shows the same idea and also illustrates that you can rivet wire to metal. You can view this more easily in the enlarged photo. Another photo shows that I riveted a purchased charm to a disc on the butterfly necklace. It was more appropriate to rivet through the charm loop here than to make a hole in the butterfly.

It is very important to use a gauge of wire that fits tightly into the hole to form the rivet. When the wire isn’t tight enough the rivet tends to lean in the hole. Cold connection instructors may provide students with conversion charts showing the size drill bit that fits specific wire gauges. At first I was excited about these, until I discovered I couldn’t locate the tiny drill bits locally. Finally, I purchased the smallest bit I could obtain and then matched the wire gauge to that bit. I use a 1/16” drill bit and 14 gauge wire.

The photos below show the process of preparing to rivet and riveting. I regret that even after two tries, we were not able to get clearer photos. My engineer husband who has many talents says he was not meant to be a photographer.

If you are familiar with drilling holes in metal, please skip this part. I make a dent in the metal with a punch or nail so the drill won’t slip and drill a hole in the top piece. If you try this, please hold the piece down firmly with two fingers. The metal will spin once the hole is drilled. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve tried to hurry this process along and finished with bleeding fingers. Next, I set this piece on top of the bottom piece and create a dent in the bottom piece. Then I drill a hole in the bottom piece (not pictured).

I wiggle the end of the wire into the holes in both pieces until about 1/8” shows on the back of the hole. You can see that I’m working with a long piece of wire. This is much simpler than precutting your wire and then trying to keep up with a tiny piece. I wonder how many of those are lost in my carpet.

I think this next part wherein the pliers become a vice is the Meador Method of Riveting. Please let me know if you have been taught to do this previously. I started doing it out of desperation. I tightly grasp the wire on top with flat nose pliers. I want the pliers to sit directly on the top piece being riveted.

Then I flush cut the wire slightly above the pliers leaving about 1/16” above them. The picture shows how I often use another piece of metal under the entire piece while I work on the top. There is about 1/8” of wire on the bottom of the piece and this helps keep it from coming out of the hole.

I continue to hold the wire tightly with the pliers as though they were a vice and use the riveting hammer to form the head of the rivet. While tapping the wire, I slowly turn the hammer or the piece in order to get a symmetrical head. The pliers will probably be marred; if you use this method, you will want to use an inexpensive or designated pair of pliers. I should NOT be using my Lindstroms for this!

Next, I carefully release the pliers and push the newly formed head of the rivet farther into the hole until the head sits flush on the top piece.

Now I flip the piece over and work on the back and cut the wire showing to about a 1/16”.

Then I tap the wire with the rivet hammer and rotate it as I did on the front to form the back rivet head. Once the rivet is secure on both sides, I continue to work with it until I’m satisfied that it is well formed and tight. I also use the round head of the rivet hammer to smooth out the rivets. (Yes, the pictures are getting worse.)

Phew! That seems like a large number of steps, but it actually goes quite quickly if the wire fits tight enough.

By the way, if you happen to cut the wire too short or too long, just get another piece of wire and start over. I’ve learned that it is usually futile to try and fix a bad rivet. Starting over is much less frustrating.

Rivets were used a bit differently in the necklace shown. The enlargement displays how I used a small piece of metal behind the pieces of the wire armature to make the connection. These connections allow just a bit of movement.

There are other types of rivets that you can use including things with heads purchased at the hardware store. You may also be able to find decorative rivets and tube type rivets for cold connections. I also like to create a balled end on a piece of wire with the torch and use the ball as the top rivet head as illustrated in the blue beads.

The trick on this one is to try to keep from flattening the ball when you hammer the back of the rivet. In the picture on the right, you can see how some of these rivets retained a rounded head while others did not. I connected these riveted discs with jump rings and completed a necklace with handmade wire. Unfortunately, this one found a new home before I took its picture.

Creating a cold connection with a rivet may be a simple task for some of you, but I found it to be difficult initially. I hope this article is positive and helpful to would-be riveters, but I feel I should mention the early pitfalls into which I fell. (ker-plunk) First, in trying to make plain wire rivets, I didn’t have wire that fit tightly enough into the holes. Secondly, I was using a regular hammer which made the process more difficult. If you really want to rivet, I suggest avoiding those problems. I spent many hours trying to rivet with wire that wasn’t tight enough for the hole size. It was a big waste of time! (although I may have gotten to practice uttering some new words) Let’s hope this short treatise saves you some of that! Happy riveting!

Karen Meador
Dream Catcher Designs

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Dr. Karen Meador
Dreamcatcher Consulting
http://www.dreamcatcherranch.net
www.dreamcatcherdesigns.etsy.com

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