Replacing Old Guitar Case Latches

While I'm waiting for the stain to dry on the Ovation and Flame guitars, I found some other trouble to get into projects to work on.

You may recall the Oahu lap steel.  It came with a super cool case.  I was able to clean the case up, but unfortunately, the latches don't work and they're beyond repair.  I started to clean them up, but the springs in the latches don't work, so I just procured some modern latches to replace them with.

So I need to get the old ones off.

Pulling back the lining reveals the backside of the rivets.  They're split rivets - when they were installed, a tool opened up the split side and drove the back of the rivets into the plywood of the case.

Drove them in really well.  I resorted to a chisel to carve enough wood away so I could pry them up.

With the split side bent up, I can pull three of the four rivets out from the front.  It takes a real tug to get them out.

One of them is really recalcitrant, so I resort to grinding the head off with my trusty (if not super high quality) Dremel tool.  More sparks fly.

The removed latch alongside a new one.  The new one is a bit smaller, but it should work fine.

Now I just need to get the other latches and hasps off.  This is more work than I expected.