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A HomeBuilt RivetEmbossingToolJohn GizziI love to scratchbuild. It is one of the few things that give methe freedom to employ my imagination and ingenuity. Thereare no instructions to follow or get in the way of my creativity.I can just let my imagination race ahead and show me the way.Recently, one of the challenges that I set before myself was tobuild a semi-scale Gloucester drawbridge for my layout out ofstyrene (Photo 1).1own use. I did not want to make this a complicated thing, but Idid want the rivets to be relatively accurate in both dimensionand alignment.I wanted my tooling for this project to also be versatile andas fast as possible to use. With that in mind, I settled for a simpledesign. The old KISS principle that includes a pull handlethat actuates a pin that makes the rivet, a fence or guide toslide strips of styrene along, and a gauge to mark how far toadvance the strips for proper spacing. And on top of all that, Iwanted this tool it to be easy for anyone to make. The followingunit allowed me to go ahead with my project.I started with the most technical part of the unit, the pin,which is nothing more than a 6” long 1/4" thick piece of pianowire (Photo 2). The pin will slide through a hole lined with a2Having no experience with a project like this, I did what Ialways do -- made what I needed to get the project done! Inthis case, I needed a way to make a lot of rivets. Embossingthem seemed the easiest way to go about it. And, while thereare commercial tools for this, it just seemed a waste of time toinvest in something that I was sure that I could create for my38 • O Scale Trains - July/Aug ’09