removing button rivets

[ABmagic]

How do I remove button rivets?

[Nimphe Wildwood]

In Real Life or the game? Honestly, I'm a lil bit confused.

[Heartsong_Steelsoul]

I think this sounds like a real life question, so I'm going to move it to OOC, but I'm going to leave a shadow so they can still find the post. If it does turn out to be a game question (about, say, studded armor), I can get it moved back.

[Kcalehc]

How long is a peice of string?

(or what are the rivets in? how big are they? can you get at both sides of them? give us some clue...)

or is this a game question and I am really confuzzied?

[Verdandi]

Every so often someone stumbles across us and thinks we're a RL crafting sort of site. I strongly suspect this is such a question.

For the poster, these boards are for tradeskills in the online game Everquest. Skills in there don't generally bear enough resemblance to the way things are made in the real world for any of us to be qualified to answer a question about how to make real stuff. There may be people who happen to know the answer, but by and large you're probably better off finding a site for people who make stuff in the real world.

[Nhin Impious]

If you're thinking of the kind of riveted-on buttons such as are normally used on jeans-- there are a couple reasons you actually wouldn't want to remove them.

The way these things are normally installed is that a small hole is poked in the fabric, the lower shank is pushed through (basically this is the metal disk that you see in the back of the button, plus a little stud that sticks up... think of a thumbtack with an oversized "pin" part).

Next, the other part-- which is the button face and a sheath-- is pushed down over the shank, until it locks. Then the button is on, for good.

A well-constructed shank button WILL NOT come loose for any stress that isn't sufficient to just rip the supporting fabric to shreds-- that's what it's supposed to do, hold up to pressure. A less-well-constructed button MIGHT be removable if you could find a pair of pliers and crush/bend/mutilate the shank until the button face would come off, then remove the rest of the button.

However, in best case, you're going to have a piece of fabric with a small section of stressed, sweaty fabric (it is going to take WORK to get that puppy off) PLUS a noticeable hole from the shank... if you planned to cover this with another button, you're going to have to patch it just to make sure the fabric stands up to the strength.

Now, are shank buttons what you were talking about, or maybe not? What kind of project was this for?

Eyith, baker of things that go crunch underfoot, and real-life tailor of the Pinkest Littlest Girl Dress In The World (hey, the Little Girl likes pink. She can't be perfect, I guess...)

[Morani]

What I find tremendously amusing about these posts isn't that the poster oopsed and didn't know/realize that this board is about a game (that's pretty understandable really) but that there is always someone here who can and DOES actually answer it. I think it's pretty cool too. The amount of diversity and sheer knowledge present in this community always astounds me.