Rivet Setting/Clinching Tongs
Next we need to make a pair of rivet setting/clinching tongs. They start out life as a pair of cheap linesmans' pliers from Walmart. They cost about $5.
Well, the teeth have to go. Also, we need to shape the tongs so that they are a little more pointy, so that they more easily fit into our work. Grind the faces of the jaws flat, removing the teeth. Only grind away enough material so that the teeth are gone. If you grind away too much, the tongs won't close enough for the two faces to still come together. You may need to grind deep into the "crotch"of the jaws, removing material so that the two jaw faces will still come together. This means you also have to grind away the built-in wire cutters:
The next step is to make the rivet clinching pocket. This pocket works just like the pockets in a stapler. When you crush a stapler, it drives the ends of the staple into shallow bowl-shaped pockets, which cause the ends of the staple to curl over. Our rivet-clinching pockets to the same thing. Use a rotary tool (like a Dremel) and an engraving burin with a tiny cutting head to make a small oval depression near the end of the tongs (note that in these pictures the deeper rivet-setting pocket [closer to the hands] has already been done):
Then drill a small hole behind the clinching pocket. It should be about the same size as your clinching pocket, and about 1/4" deep. This is the pocket you use for driving the rivet home:
To use the tongs, you first drive the rivet home into the deep pocket, and then you peen the rivet point using the shallow pocket.