Thanks for all of the suggestions. I know about Archer rivets, but I don’t have any, so I used the Tichy rivets I had. After this experience, I’ll definitely stock some Archer rivets for the next adventure. I’ve harvested rivets from Athearn bodies for the bolt heads needed for the second grab iron on car kits that come with bolt heads for only one left side grab iron, but I haven’t needed to add more than a few rivets until now. The flat cars I’m modifying require 20 rivets per car, and I have four cars.

As stated earlier, I used CA to stick the rivets to the resin. The body castings were washed with Dawn, and I had scrapped and sanded off the unwanted detail, so the resin was clean and had tooth. Also as stated earlier, some rivets got knocked off during subsequent handling, so the CA didn’t provide a very good bond on such a small surface area. I tried two methods for fixing the rivets. I used a soft ¼ in. flat brush to apply Micro Satin to all the rivets on one side of the bodies, and I sprayed Testors Lusterless Flat from a rattle car on the other side. I lost six rivets by brushing and two rivets during spraying. Spraying or airbrushing appears to be safer than brushing, so I’ll go back and respray both sides after replacing the lost rivets.

CA was difficult to work with on such small rivets, so I’m going to try Future if I have to apply styrene rivets on resin again. Meanwhile, I’ll look for some Archer rivets to add to my arsenal.

Nelson Moyer