[Nathan Slingerland]

Thankfully I know what to do next time but for this particular speaker I'd still like to find a better solution than machine screws for the drilled out rivets.

Maybe rivets?  

At some point I bought these rivets based on a post here on the Phorum - the idea being to take the rivet of the mandrel and manually compress it.
That didn't work so well when I tried it - the copper is just too soft - and the rivet would deform side to side.

I decided to try an actual pop rivet tool - Marson 39000 HP-2 Professional Hand Riveter from Amazon - and see how that would work.

Here's what the pop rivets look like:

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4629/3855...170f_z.jpg]

And the box:
[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4677/3965...58af_z.jpg]

Basically you insert the pop rivet like so:

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4704/3947...7964_z.jpg]

Then put the rivet gun over the pointed end and gently (!) squeeze until the rivet 'pops' - center brass mandrel breaks off.

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4613/4032...e5c0_z.jpg]

I was left with these:

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4749/3965...0fc4_z.jpg]

The result is pretty nice - almost as good as the original from the back side of the plug:

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4762/2549...3eac_z.jpg]

The front side looks OK - but most importantly it's no where near as thick as the machine screw head.

[Image: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4628/3965...1c27_z.jpg]