[CabrioletDon]

Hi, Steve...there are a lot of good ideas and examples out there and what works for removing a small rivet in lighter material might not be correct for heavier rivets in frames. I recently had to remove an incorrect crossmember in my '30 Cabriolet (14 rivets) and after carefully trying a number of methods, here's what worked best for me and did not damage the surrounding frame or original hole: It's slow, but I used a cutoff wheel on a variable-speed Dremel with flex shaft to gradually "shave off" the top portion of the rivet's head, then continuing down so that there was very little of the rivet head left. Taking a punch smaller than the diameter of the rivet, I began at the center to knock it back into the hole. This would eventually cause what was left of the rivet head (now just a paper-thin layer) to mushroom up. By alternating between the Dremel to trim off the mushroomed part and tapping on the center with a punch, eventually the rivet shaft begins to move in the hole, showing you exactly where it is. At that point, it was easy to keep tapping it out without hitting the surrounding frame. In a few instances, once the rivet head was mostly ground away with the Dremel and where it was hard to get a clear path to the rivet with a punch and hammer, I used a much smaller diameter drill to "hollow out" the rivet's shaft, and that makes the punching through somewhat easier. It's time consuming, but for me, it was better than drilling first, because of the lessened potential for damaging the surrounding structure. Hope this helps!