The lock is held together with several tiny copper rivets. Here’s a little tutorial on how I made them.
I start out with a piece of copper wire clamped tightly in a pair of vise grips. There’s about 1/8″ extending above the jaws.
I set the vise grips on top of a vise that’s open just enough so that any extra wire can fit between the jaws. A piece of scrap steel with a hole drilled in it is placed over the wire so that I have a nice flat surface to work with.
The exposed end of the wire is peened to create a head for the rivet. Sometimes the wire below bends a little and needs to be straightened back out.
The rivet is cut to length with flush cutters. This is one of the points where I am most likely to lose the rivet.
If the rivet is in an easily accessible spot, I can peen the other side on the anvil. Most likely, especially when building locks, the is not the case. I use a large nail set clamped in the vise as an anvil. It allows me to support rivets in awkward places, and also gives a nice round shape to the head.
Here the rivet is placed in the hole. This is the other point where I am likely to lose it. Needlenose pliers and patience are very useful here. You can see how much stuff there is to work around on the front side of the lock; this is where the nail set comes in very handy.
And here are the rivets in place. Not the prettiest, but quite effective. When I went to replace this brass leaf spring, I had to grind the rivet out with the Dremel.