Hiya!
When I first started making jewelry I was taking online classes at the San Francisco Academy of Art School. When we were learning to solder there were times that I was so frustrated that I vowed I didn’t really need to learn to solder, I would just use cold connections for everything!
I have since embraced soldering and have grown to love it even though it still frustrates me at times! I do however love cold connections also. I was going through some of my jewelry, still trying to clean and get more organized. I’m convinced that keeping my studio clean and organized is a never ending challenge. That discussion is for another blog though. As I was going through some things I came across a bunch of pieces that were not finished. Some of which when I started working on them the plan was to rivet.
tools for riveting
pieces to rivet
Riveting is just one of the 7 common types of cold connections. Out of the 7 different types of cold connections, screws, nuts and bolts, stitches, tabs, folds, rivets are by far the one I use the most and perhaps the most versatile when soldering just won’t work! Rivets not only work well if you are using wood, leather or plastic but some sort of cold connection is a necessity for these materials!
There are basically two main types of rivets with some variations, wire and tube. Both can be use decoratively and or for functionality. I find tube rivets to be the easier of the two to make. If you are planning to make lots of tube rivets, I would invest in a handy little tube cutter. It allows you to cut rivets of precisely the same size and allows for a nice, clean straight cut. There are various tools that can be used to flare your tube for the rivet. I like to us a leathercraft punch set. Dapping tools also work great if you have them.
tube cutter
punch tools
I am not going to go into the details of exactly how to make a tube rivet as there are countless tutorials and videos online. If you need a refresher Nancy L.T. Hamilton has a great YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SM-WZPV1Io
I find the wire rivet a bit more difficult to make and to get looking pretty! Again I’m not going into detail on the how to as Nancy has a great video on wire rivets too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1xuRcE0Shg
For more jewelry and riveted jewelry visit www.cksventures.com
ENJOY!!
cheryl
As an aside note I tried and tried to get this post to format correctly. No matter what I did it seemed to have a mind of its own!