Removing rivets requires grinding part of the head, selecting the right drill bit, and drilling through the center hole. Care must be taken to avoid enlarging the rivet hole. Grinding is not necessary for countersunk rivets.
Trying to remove rivets can be a tough job because rivets are meant to be permanent fasteners, but it’s possible with two simple tools and a little patience. On some types of rivets, you should start by grinding part of the head of the rivet. You then need to select the right bit and drill the rivets. Being careful and patient is important when removing rivets, because you don’t want to accidentally enlarge the rivet hole and cause a big problem in the process.
The first step when removing rivets is to sand part of the head. This will expose the rivet shaft and should make it easier to extract the rivets. You just need to remove part of the head, just enough to see the rivet hole. While it is possible to skip this part, it is not recommended. If you skip honing the head, it can be more difficult to drill the head and you may not drill through the center of the rivet, increasing your chances of enlarging the rivet hole.
You should use the grinder for most rivet heads, but not all. If you are removing domed, regular, and most other rivets, grinding is recommended. However, countersunk rivet heads shouldn’t require any grinding, and grinding can actually be difficult. This is because the rivet should be flush with the surface, so there is no head to remove and you’ll end up smoothing the surface of the item instead of the rivet itself.
Before you remove the rivets with a drill, you should choose the right drill size. This will depend on the size of the rivets. The drill bit should be slightly larger in diameter than the center hole in the rivet, but no larger than the rivet itself. If you use a drill bit the size of the full rivet or larger, this will increase the hole size in the rivet and you will need to use a larger rivet to replace it.
Once you’ve chosen the correct drill bit, you can begin removing a rivet by slowly drilling through the center hole. You should keep going down until you’ve drilled the entire rivet; then stop. If you continue, you could cause damage to the item itself, triggering the need for extensive repairs, or causing enough damage to make repairs impossible. After this, you should be able to manually remove the remaining parts of the rivet.
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