I love tools, I own far more than I will ever need. But if you are only going to be doing a few rivets you can just form the rivets by hand with a hammer and drift.

You don't need to buy any special tool (or premade rivet for that matter).

Take a look at this site and you will see some simple hammer power to form the rivet.

http://www.pinrestore.com/Riveting.html

But you don't need to even buy this tool. You can just do it with a standard drift. It might not look as perfect as specially tool would make, but I don't think anyone would ever notice.

Ideally, you will be able to find the correct rivets, that will make you life much easier.

But, you can make rivet with any random piece of metal rod stock that will deform when hammered (not so hard that it will crack). Form a head on the rod with a hammer, cut the rivet off to the right length and peen the rivet head over on the other side with a hammer, DIY rivet. You can also find a nail with a right size head on it and cut it off and use it as a ready made rivet. The rivet does not need to a have a hollow tube on the back side, just hammer the end so it is upset (you are doing on a smaller scale what old riveters did when they constructed a building using riveted steel beams.)

The correct tools and pre-made rivets will make the job go much quicker, but if you are only doing a few it will probably take you less time to just use common tools and material compared to finding and ordering specially items that you will use only a few times.