One of the commonest question we are asked about terrain building is how to make rivets and bolt heads. This section describes the techniques used by modellers to make rivets. These ideas were collected from the discussion forum.
There are three techniques for making rivets - sticking on natural and man-made objects, pressing or cutting them out of sheet material, and using special art materials.
Use split peas or split lentils for large rivets - see for example the archaic bridge and the water tower. Round-headed pins and nails can be pushed into the model, or have the heads snapped off and glued on - see the road edges on the archaic bridge and Necromunda walkways.
Small doll's eyes from craft shops make good (fairly large) rivets too - see Salvatore's gun emplacement. And of course you can always use real bolt and screw heads of you can find any small enough.
Apparently you can buy special punches from model shops for stamping out tiny rivets and bolt heads. I have never used them but I do use a leather punch. This is a punch for making holes in belts and such like which has a revolving head with 6 sizes of punch. Use it to punch rivets out of card or plastic sheeting.
This iron bridge was made entirely from plastic girder rod, available from model railroad and modelling materials shops. I used the hole punch to make bolt heads from thin plastic card.
The bolt heads were applied with super-glue. Use a tooth pick or similar to put a tiny blob of glue on the model (not the rivet). Once set, the slot was cut in using a fine razor saw. Cut the slots at different angles for a more realistic effect.
You can also make panels with rivets out of thin plastic card. Turn the card over and stab it with a pointed (but not too sharp) object. You can see this technique in this 40K refinery in the buildings section.
The rivets in this stairway were made by pressing a pointed tool into very thin plastic sheeting, and then turning it over and gluing it on. The rivets around the fan in the background were made in the same way. If you can't get plastic sheeting try using the plastic from margarine tubs.
If you browse around an art materials shop you can find a material in tubes which is used for making squirt-on beads or simulating the metal strips in stained glass windows. This is a good way to make very small rivets - you just blob them onto the surface. They may have a little point on the top that you can just brush or sand off.