mia_mcdavid has a bill hook machete, very well employed in her large garden. The hook was a length of steel rod riveted to it to gather in the brush so it could not escape. Unfortunately, a week ago the hook broke when I was using it.

OK. I had to make a new hook. First thing was to drill out the rivets:

Then I ground down the rest of the rivet heads with an angle grinder.

Resulting in this:

For the new hook, rather than use a rod, I took a strip of 1 1/2″ wide, 1/8″ thick mild steel.
I sketched out a design, including rivet holes to match those in the machete blade:

Then I cut out my new hook, using a hacksaw and the angle grinder with a cutting disk. The angle grinder was faster, but much more scary with all the sparks flying. OTOH that was actually kind of thrilling :-)>

To put it together I used some very ordinary rivets, which I had originally purchased for leatherwork:

With this result:

(with the old hook along side)

I thought it looked even more evil than before :-)> Our foster daughter, carpe_noctum_93 agreed when she saw me take a few test strokes in the back yard. It worked just fine.