Hello Keith,
I worked in the US Aerospace industry for 23 years. We manufactured blind rivets for the defense department and also commercially. The rivets are made in horizontal metal presses called "heading machines". They form the rivet into the "mushroom shape" that you might be familiar with. The raw material we used was wire, aluminium, steel, stainless, brass, titanium, copper etc etc. Sometimes the wire we had was too large in diameter for the machines punch and die tooling to handle and we had to draw the wire through a wiredrawer to reduce its size. It is now a relatively clean operation but when I started in the 60's it was a filthy, dangerous job. We used to coat the wire with white lead. Extremely poisonous and it stayed in the body and caused brittle bone disease. Of course the danger to hands, arms and fingers was also always a threat when dealing with moving, very heavy mechanical equipment. I'm healthy at 63 and still have all my fingers...lolol Thankfully, retired now. Hope that helps you understand what the drawing process is. Take Care....Keith (yep, me too)
