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A Riveting Solution

Most of crafts, woodworking, home repair, fencing, and decorating seems to be about sticking things together. Usually this is simple enough: glue, nails, screws, and the ubiquitous roll of duct tape will get you through most projects. But sometimes you need a unique tool for a unique problem.

Say you want to stick two thin things together: strips of leather in a craft project, for example, or hanging things on RV walls. Enter the venerable pop rivet gun.

Pop, or blind, rivets are great for joining two flat, thin surfaces… especially when you only have access to one side of one of them, as in the wall example above. You’ll find dozens of uses: A/V projects, create nifty funiture, customize a tool belt, customize a hot rod, make models, and tons of other stuff.

I’ve also done some mundane stuff like hanging gutters and attaching hooks to the walls of a plastic storage building.

You can find a kit with a rivet gun and a variety of rivets to get you started for under $20. One piece of advice: do yourself a favor and don’t buy the cheapest rivet gun you can find. I did, and spent as much time unjamming the thing as riveting with it.

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