The couple of thousand brake rivets I've installed were all brass, to the best of my recollection. We had a relining machine at the family shop back in the late 1950's. It had a built-in drilling fixture to remove the old rivets, a radius grinder to clean up the surface of the shoes prior to relining, and even a special drill bit to counterbore the lining material for the rivets. We bought bulk lining material in 100-foot rolls.
Jerry
