[morzh]

I learned my lesson when I tried to rivet the backelite speaker plug of my 20 after drilling out old rivets and re-wiring it.
I kinda suspected there'd be something wrong with it but went with it anyway, and sure enough, it cracked. I glued it back together. And I glued in the copper rivets from the back. Butts only. No one sees the front of it - it faces the chassis.

Now with my 18 when I drilled the rivets out and re-wired it, even though the plug is not backelite and consists of three layers of some sort of wood-like material (fiber-something???) I decided to be careful, as the pressure developed by the mandrel when going through the rivet is huge and if the rivet is of the matching size to the hole, it may still crack even if the material is not backelite.

There are also only so many options one gets when wanting to buy copper rivets. I barely found a bag of copper rivets of somewhat matching size a couple of years or so ago, on e-Bay.


So, here's what I do:

1) I take the mandrel out of the rivet and discard it (or use it for some off-label purpose...it is a nice copper-clad steel nail).
2) I take the rivet, and insert it in the hole from the wire entry side (the butt will remain at that side).
3) I take a large diameter bolt extraction tool. It has a very obtuse angle very nice large tip. I put the rivet butt on a piece of hard metal, so only the rivet touches the metal, and not the plug itself (otherwise it will crack), using the metal as an anvil. I put the tip of the extraction tool to the front end of the rivet and with a hammer flare it until it holds the case of the plug together. careful not to over-flare (case will crack).

   
   



Comes out nice, evenly flared and....copper! almost like the original.

When I come home I will add the photos.