Help with copper rivets!!!!!

[RichardCollmorgen]

Thanks for the pic's Bruce. Is the doming of the head just for appearance or is there some mechanical reason behind it?

[bruce johnson]

Richard,

The pictures really don't show how good these look after you do them.

As far as doming the head. Shortish story. During saddle week at Sheridan in 2006 several of us on this forum were there. It seems like they'd show some little trick or tip about a tool not many of us had, lunch break came and we'd hotfoot it down to Sheridan Leather to pick one up. The most popular were the rivet sets and Bob Douglas slim blade awls. I hustled off with my pal Jeff and we got rivet sets. That night when my wife picked me up after the class, she saw Don's domed rivets. She asked him where he got them, they looked so nice. He told her about the domer, she told me I NEEDED to get one. One step ahead of you, honey. To this day she will show anyone who comes over, interest in leather or not, how much better the domed heads look. She will also fire up the drill press with the punch chucked in it and punch a few holes too. Those are her two favorite things. She will look at a saddle and the first thing she looks at is whether the rivets are domed or not. Yeah, they look better. The silver cap copper rivets I get will dome up nicely without damaging the engraving too.

Mechanically. It sinks the edges into the grain a little. My old pal tells me back in the days of flat leather drive belts, these were used to splice skives together. The heads were flat and countersunk on purpose. They didn't want them domed up or sticking up. What I see sometimes on the ones not domed and installed poorly is the shank was bent when the burr was set and an edge of the head isn't flush. That little edge sticking up catches everything and wears whatever rides over it.

[Timbo]

How short to you cut the shank above the bur??

Then what do you do?? Flatten it out with a hammer then dome the shank??

Tim