Riveting pewter

[The Bowler Hatted Turner]

Does anyone here have experience of riveting pewter please?

[Les Symonds]

I guess you'd have to use a soft metal rivet!

[Paul Hannaby]

Perhaps not the answer you want but how about soldering instead?

[Bryan Milham]

John,
Maybe a glib answer but how is it different to riviting any other metal. Drill aligned holes, put in rivit and pein over. The only issue I could see is it's so soft, any miss and you'll dent the pewter.

[Redtails5]

Hi
All that would achieve would be to squeeze and damage the pewter.
The more interesting question why do you want to rivit in the first place?

[seventhdevil]

why not rivet with some copper?

both are soft so should change shape together and i think the contrast would be a good look.

[Les Symonds]

... how is it different to riviting any other metal. .....

Under the normal process of rivetting, the rivet expands in girth, swelling into and locking itslef into the pre-drilled hole in the material being joined. If the material is much softer than the rivet, it will expand with the rivet and therefore not give such a firm hold. Also, the heads of the rivet will squash into the material and could well spoil the surface appearance......that's why copper rivets used in clinker-built boats had a rove set onto them!
Les

[bodrighywood]

Depending on how strong they need to be, as opposed to just ornamental maybe something like these which are for mafterial, they sort of clip together. Used to use something similar at sea on canvas. They are applied trough a hole and piched together with a special pair of pliers.

Pete

[Paul Hannaby]

Or how about the old style bifurcated rivets?

[Tony Kairo]

Can you not use pewter rivets ?

[John Plater]

Hello BHT,
I spoke to a colleague who is a member of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers. She has riveted pewter in the past, using pewter wire to make her own rivets. So I guess if you acquire a rivet set and snap for round head rivets and a ball pein hammer the world should be your oyster !! Alternatively you could countersink the pewter and hammer the rivet into the countersink before dressing off the surface. An interesting bit of "old school" metal joining !
ATB John