Homebrew Hall of Fame!

[Ezer]

I tried jenovas link, and got an access denied, skolding . looks like the ministry of fear, uh I mean homeland security has been working, and I read that all they did was party in hawaii and spend the easy money the taxpayers give them.

Just gave the link a try. It didn't give me any trouble.

[master in training]

i've got a website, its pretty crap but i can use it for anything i want, so does anyone mind if i put that list above into a page or 3 so that its easier to see the pictures rather than clicking each link, i dont know about anyone else but my pc is old and it'll take me a few hours to go through all the links! the sites address is http://www.freewebs.com/masterintraining.

if theres anything i can stick on the site i dont mind doing it. i dont know much about freewebs so im not sure about the limits to free accounts so the hosts may change at some point, but oh well!

[NKT]

I've done a gallery, you can see it at http://www.officedevils.com/lp101.html

I need a new card reader before I can post picks of picks of my own, which will be tomorrow at the earliest.

[sonic]

I noticed in several of the links, the handle appears to be an exacto knife holder. Is that what it is or is it something else?

[NKT]

Right, I've added my picks on the the end of my page.

All made from feeler gauges, you can see the thicknesses on the side of them, spanning from the shims on the bottom left, at thousands of an inch, up to the thickest rake, at .7mm.

[sonic]

I'm new to this but had some time on my hands and the tools avalible to make a few picks and a couple of torque wrenches. The picks are made from Stanley 24 tpi new hacksaw blades. The torque wrenches are made from wiper blade stainless.

I used the new paint on the blades to my advantage. Stanley uses a pretty good paint! I drew the shap that I wanted on the paint. Then went to the bench grinder and got the picks to close to the shape that I had drawn. I finished the grinding with a battery powered Dremal with a stone. I then took the paint off the working end with the Dremal tool with the sand paper attachement. This also polished and de-burred the tool.

The torque wrenches were a piece of cake. I just used 2 pair of pliars and cold bent them to shape and used a pair of sidewall cutters to cut it off the stock.

I would post pictures if I could figure out how. I do not have a hosting service to put them on.

If you are like me and new to this, the building of the picks was really not very hard. It took me about 10 minutes to make each of my 5 picks. If you have some basic tools, look at the pictures and give it a try!

[sonic]

Well I found a web site to host my pictures. Hope I get this right!

These are the picks just made to start with.

[digital_blue]

Cool. Stanley brand lockpicks! Nice work tho. They look very good!

db

[Kaellman]

Nice work Sonic. Looks like a good set of picks to start off with! Keep em coming and post picks as you get along!

Gl !

[HeadHunterCEO]

cool picks sonic

the crafty homemadwe stuff i see on this site is probably why i keep coming back

[pun1sher]

nice picks, especially for a first timer. what's that one second from top?

[bitpusher]

Just Dremelled my first set out of hacksaw blades, I think they came out quite well.



I started fiddling around with the snap gun about a month ago. After a little practice, it works pretty good. The top row is what I just made, from left to right:
1. First pick, a small hook I just eye balled.
2. Another hook.
3. Small half diamond.
4. Large half diamond.
5. Random snake.
6. And another.
7. Bogota! Picked my first lock (front door deadbolt) with this one, in 20 seconds. Thanks Raimundo.

And with the short pieces left in the middle, I made a "wallet set":
8. Hook.
9. Half diamond.
10. Bogota.
11. Tension wrench with tapered end.
Not as comfortable to use, but quite functional.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this forum, answering all my questions before I had to ask.

[Mad Mick]

Nice work bitp, and a tribute to raimundo to boot.

Great finish on the handle of the med hook - far left. (was it intentional?) People pay serious cash over here for paint jobs looking like that on car mirrors, motorcycles etc. They lay the base coat (metallic), then the colour, then dab it with scrunched-up cling-film (saran wrap?) before it is dry, then apply the lacquer coat. Fantastic results can be achieved.

[cracksman]

Very nice Bitpusher, agree with Mick on that first one
For your wallet set, you may find they fit nicely in an x-acto knife, gives a nice handle and feel.
regardless, excellent job

[bitpusher]

Thanks for the feedback.

The interesting thing about the finish on that hook (and the wallet set, though that cannot be seen as well in this pic) is that it came about through laziness. I decided to use a polishing wheel on them (Dremel #425) without first sanding off the original hacksaw blade paint. The result, due to polishing with the edge of a small wheel spinning fast enough to jangle it around erratically, is a sufficiently smooth surface that looks pretty cool, with the metal showing through in that irregular way.

I think I will continue to experiment with the results achievable in this way.