Karl,
With reference to your original post:-
Things to note- If stainless is in contact with carbon it will rust or corrode. So any stainless needs to be insulated with glass or resin or something else depending on your application. So bed all stainless fittings that you add in epoxy.
ALSO Carbon is not an especially great material to drill let alone rivet. So keep drilling and especially riveting to an absolute min and bed it all in a thickened epoxy mix.
Being the anal kind of person that I am, if I was making a pole that I was going to drill I'd make sure I included at least some glass in that area of the laminate if I was going to rivet I'd add kevlar just in that area.
As your not making the pole from scratch I'd follow Team VMG's advice. Paul summed it up as well as it could.
Good luck.

Regards,
Phill

I know that the voices in my head aint real,
but they have some pretty good ideas.
There is no such thing as a quick fix and I've never had free lunch!