Riveting Price Ruminations

This morning was The Sprout's first day of school for the year, so I waited around to make sure the bus really did show up (it did). And since that meant that I was running late anyway, I detoured over to The Leather Factory store for a stop-gap supply of copper rivets.

Yesterday I ordered three pounds of #9 rivets and burrs from Weaver Leather, at (rounding to whole dollars), $9/pound. At the Leather Factory I paid $10 for 50 1/2"-long #9 rivets with burrs. Cue sticker-shock. According to the postal scale at work, those 50 rivets & burrs weigh 5.5 ounces. Which works out to 145 rivets per pound, which number I used in the calcs below.

We could also use some more #12 copper rivets, which Weaver doesn't carry. So I was exercising my google-fu to find suppliers. I found who I think I bought them from last time, but they sell the burrs ($15 - I think for a half-pound) and rivets ($17/lb) separately, so let's go with what was an average price of a couple other places that sell rivets + burrs per pound.

So, from Weaver, for #9

• $9/lb
• $0.56/oz
• 6 cents each.

from Leather Factory

• $29/lb
• $1.81/oz.,
• 20 cents each

other suppliers/Weaver for #14

• $20/lb
• $1.25/oz.,
• 14 cents each

Yeah, you might notice that I'm wantonly mixing the sizes there. The thing is, from most suppliers, the difference in price vs. size is small to non-existent. Not sure why Weaver has such good prices on #9s, I'm guessing that Weaver moves enough #9 copper rivets that they can buy them cheap.

Anyhoo, the most important thing for me to remember is DON'T BUY COPPER RIVETS FROM LEATHER FACTORY! And I get wholesale pricing at LF, which is generally substantially cheaper than their retail price.

BTW, #9 have a 0.161" diameter shaft, #12 are 0.137", #14 are about 0.1"