I know I have talked about MaryC’s rivet press quite a bit lately. I thought I would do a post about it, so you could learn more.
You can see Mary’s rivet press in the photo, left. It is about 2 feet tall and not very wide. In order to make it work, you have to insert a die into the top (under the spring) and on the bottom (under my black fabric). Before inserting rivet, it is important to make a hole in your fabric. Mary has a leather punch tool for that (see photo below), which makes it very easy. Then the rivets are easy to insert through the fabric. They click together, so they don’t fall apart as you insert them into the rivet press. Then the fun part: smash them with the press. We put a piece of fabric between the rivet and the die to keep the rivet from getting scratched. That’s an after market tip. 😉
The leather punch can make different sized holes by turning the wheel on the top.
I used Chicago Screws once and sincerely disliked the look. They were not tight in the fabric. Once rivets have the fabric pressed between them, the fabric is not going to move. The rivets are tight against the fabric.
Mary got all different dies when she got her rivet press and I think this makes sense. Yes, it is more money, but then you have all the dies you need and you don’t have to figure out which one you don’t have. Or worse, you find you don’t have the one die you need to finish your project.
Mary uses the same system for her hardware that she does for her rivets and dies. She puts different sizes in smaller boxes, then they all go in a larger box. This keeps everything together and available when needed.