[Sander Marechal]

I finally have a hauberk to go along with my coif and of course, I want to tailor it as well. When rebuilding my coif I noticed that riveting was sometimes hard, to which my supplier suggested that I anneal the rivets first.

But, how do I do that? I read how to anneal rings. String them on a wire and get them red hot with a blowtorch. But I can't string rivets up. Could I use a steel spoon? I'm a bit worried that the rivets are so tiny the blowtorch will blow them away, or that they cool too fast lying on a spoon and all.

Any tips? Thanks in advance!

[Boris Bedrosov]

Hi Sander!

I also anneal my rivets, while working with riveted maille.
For this purpose I use an ordinary tin from canned food - just put the rivets in the tin, heat them with a propane torch until turn red and after that I just leave them to cool.
The only important thing is to choose the tin carefully - if it's too big and deep the flame of the torch sometimes could extinguish by itself. For example my tin is approx. two fingers (3 - 3.5 cm) deep and this is quite enough.

Of course the tin is not the only option - you could use every shallow steel volume you have in reach. And you are worried about the speed of cooling - you could just repeat heating several times.

[Sander Marechal]

Thanks! Good to know that canned food tins work. Saves me a few bucks from ruining a perfectly good spoon :-)