How to produce your own rivets

[°junk°]

Some days ago I had an idea how to produce my own round rivets in an acceptable diameter for 1/24 scale plastic cars. I saw some guys sawing allen wrenches and cutting polystyrene rods or sprue parts apart, but this is too fiddly imo and can't produce many that look the same. You could also buy a punch-and-die-set which would be very expensive, too expensive for me atm.

Using an old 0.5mm mechanical pencil and a 0.25mm/0.010" Evergreen styrene sheet, I built my own punch-and-die-set, at least a sort of:



Push the button on the top of the pen and keep pressing it down as you set the pencil onto the styrene sheet. The lead will go back into the tube first, but you have to apply much more pressure to punch through the sheet.



To get the little rivet out of the pencil, you just have to push the lead outwards again. I think it's best to release it to a piece of sticky tape so as not to lose the tiny part. Even if you do lose some - just make yourself a new one! I made ten of them:



Needless to say you don't have to have to sacrifice a mechanical pencil, you could use any kind of old fine pen if you pull out the writing part of it: you just need the tube. As a matter of fact, I think it's hard to get every single piece out of a tube of this diameter by hand...
Shaping a soft pipe with pliers, you could even end up with hexagonal nuts.

Try it out!

A big thank-you goes to Cheesey153 who checked and corrected my translation.
Thanks mate!

[hirofkd]

You can file and sharpen the tip to make the job easier (and the pencil will still work). I have modified mechanical pencils in 0.3mm and 0.5 mm sizes.

[viperofoz]

Originally Posted by hirofkd

You can file and sharpen the tip to make the job easier (and the pencil will still work). I have modified mechanical pencils in 0.3mm and 0.5 mm sizes.

I sharpened mine too.

I also replaced the lead with a length of brass wire of the same diameter, now it doesn't break and I can use more pressure to make a decent indent in the rivet as i push it out.

Regards, Dan

[°junk°]

I just tried hirofkd's tip and sharpened my my pencil using a 400 grit sandpaper. I have to say it works much better this way.