Eyelets, grommets, rivets, decorivets and…aglets?!

One of my coworkers passed along some information that clears up a fine distinction:

An eyelet, strictly speaking, is a single-piece metal ring, reinforcing a hole in material like fabric or paper.  You’ll often find these in office-supply stores…

A grommet is bigger than an eyelet, and is two pieces (a base and a washer).  It’s another way of reinforcing a hole in material with metal: the grommet base goes through a hole, the washer is placed over it and the two are affixed to each other.  A specialized kind of grommet is the Bead cores / grommets bead core, used to make a silver lining in your bead, giving a Pandora beadsPandora-style” effect.

RivetsRivets look like eyelets from the back, but their tops are solid, with no hole, and are rounded.  Prior to use, a rivet is a smooth cylindrical shaft; one end has a head on it.

A Decorivetsdecorivet is a jewelry finding made by Vintaj.  It’s a decorative metal object (butterfly, compass, blue-jeans style rivet, etc.) with a pointed rivet shaft that can be pressed through or folded around other surfaces.

:) And some off-subject trivia: the (usually plastic) tip at the end of a shoelace (or bolo cord) is an aglet.

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