I promised to give a set of pewter buttons to the winner of the 15th century category of my Sharp Dressed Man contest, but I hadn’t ever gotten around to figuring out how to make them. I looked at some extant buttons, and it looks like many of them have flattened shanks with drilled holes rather than shanks cast as loops. This meant that I could use the same mold for integral rivet belt mounts and buttons. I made a button face mold out of a little scrap of soapstone, and gave it a shot. One of the mold cavities didn’t quite line up with the shank right, but the other one hit dead center. I mashed the shank flat with vise grips, drilled the hole, et voila!
