Now that we have bolted the helmet together and it is in the shape we want we are ready to take out those bolts and permanently rivet it all together.

About the rivets. This picture shows a couple of different sizes. They are mild steel solid rivets of differing lengths. The head can be either truss head or brazier head. Of course you have a whole lot of options when it comes to rivets. These are what I used.

Now we need to take each bolt and nut out and replace it with a rivet. You can see in this picture that a bolt is removed (empty hole) and we have heat a rivet. This helmet is right on the horn of the anvil.

That rivet gets inserted and hammered. It peans over on the inside against the horn of the anvil. I generally start it with a one pound hammer then move up to a two pound hammer to finish it.

The rivets can be too long to mushroom over nicely so you can shorten them either by cutting while cold or by hot cutting like this on a hot cutting tool. This is inserted into the hardy hole and you hammer on the rivet. It slices it down to the desired size. I have more about hardy tools right here

Ok! Continue riveting until all the bolts are replaced by rivets. Yup, it will take some time and if you are unhappy with a rivet you can remove it and replace it with a new one.

Let's continue with the tutorial

Make a Damascus Steel Knife

Damascus steel is challenging to make. But you don't have to make it for a knife. You can buy a blank and make a knife with it. I show you how in this tutorial: Make a Damascus Steel Knife (I also have a video for it) And I hated to hide all that striated steel under a wooden handle so I made a clear epoxy resin handle so we could see through it.

Forge a Medieval Letter Opener

It is an easy project and we learn six different blacksmithing techniques while doing it. Want to learn what a blacksmith does? This is a good place to learn it. Forge a Medieval Letter Opener

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