Safety:

To avoid injury be sure to observe safety rules. When drilling, wear eye protection. Never hammer the end of a screw driver or wooden handled tool to make holes. Be aware of the safety precautions necessary for the tools you use.

You can make small rivets with commercial ear posts purchased from jewelry supply stores. There is a flat end that is meant to have an earring soldered to it. This flat end becomes one end of the rivet. So you only have to assemble the objects you want to rivet together and form a head on the remaining end. Both sterling silver and gold-filled ear posts make great rivets. I order my ear posts from Rio Grande. You may find other sources you like better. They probably aren't the cheapest place, but I find them convenient because they carry lots of tools, also sterling silver and other metals. The sterling posts I buy have 1.5 mm pads, the gold-filled ones have 1 mm pads. Be aware that some earposts have almost no head. These won't work for the rivets I'm describing here, because you would have to form the head on both ends of the post.

I frequently use rivets in my work. You can fabricate several parts, and when you're happy with the look, rivet them together. They make metal working feel much like collage to me.

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