Help with pick designs>

[Heliox]

I don't have much money to devote to lockpicking as it's something of a low priority hobby at the moment so i've begun making my own picks. I got some plumber snake at Home Depot and took my vise grip to it to cut it and my dremel for shaping and now have about 6 diamonds and hooks. I have a standard southord hook, wrench and their 2 primary double sided picks along with some wrenches of my own. (soon to be seriously expanded when i get a good micrometer)

I've seen (i think) all of the available videos and searched through the forums. I cannot find any good threads or documentation on the design of the rakes with multiple pins such as the Southord L rake and W rake. I have found the king/queen thread which implies that they are used for euro locks and i've found the computergenerated threads which wonderfully describe the design of picks shaped in accordance with the MACS for a given lock type. I mean to write a program to start calculating these as soon as i have time to work out the probabilities appropriately. Assuming that the distribution is irregular enough.

I can assume that rakes should be designed with the pin spacing of the target lock in mind suggesting that different rakes might have the same basic design but be specific to a given manufacturer. I cannot, however assume that there will be a given relationship between the pin spacings. I have one pick that I made that looks basically like a W rake, but with 3 notches spaced about 2 kwikset spacings apart.

I guess my real question is: why are the rakes like the W,S,C,L etc. REALLY shaped like they are, what makes them applicable to which locks and how can I make them myself?

I'm too analytical to be able to work off of template photos taken at a bad angle especially when I don't know what brands of locks they are supposed to be for. I also have about 30 blanks for more picks burning a hole in my desk.

I really have searched thoroughly, though I suspect that as happens frequently i'm using the wrong search strings.

Or should I just stick to hooks and skip the rakes and jigglers for now?

If I can figure out how to easily and (mostly) anonymously post pics of my picks, I will. I've taken 600 grit sandpaper to all surfaces and they're pretty shiny on all surfaces.

[Geek142]

Hey

I dont really think there is a most important pick shape, Hooks can be used as rakes, diamonds can be used for rakes aswell. I think it is personal preference, some people like using hooks others may use diamonds. Its completely up to the person on what they want to use.

All you need to make a good rake is a rotary and a set of small files.

Once you have made your blank on your grinder then fine tune it with your rotary it might help to have small files to get better edges and smoother corners.

Hope that helps

Geek

[Romstar]

You can't exactly pick a "best" shape.

While some people seem to do better with hooks than diamonds, or vise versa, the simple fact is that you use what works best.

In my opinion, a proper pick set should always have 3 diamonds, 3 hooks, at least 1 3/4 snake, 1 ball, 1 half ball, 1 double ball, and 1 double half ball. Assorted other rakes and riffles to round it out. Computer and profile picks are their own special tools. Rakes similar to Raimundo's rakes, are always a good thing to have.

After that, a wide selection of tension tools. Tension tools are the most overlooked item in a pick set.

The King and Queen picks (which I have been making for a long time) are NOT intended for UK locks. As a matter of fact, with the obvious exception of oval and euro type cylinders, the YALE locks are almost indentical no matter what country you find them in. Round, oval, profile and other. The keyway is the issue.

Now, the more european locks you work with, or the more secure (the Medeco Keymark series comes to mind) the more you will realize the value of strong, small and thin tools. You can't pick if you can't move the tools.

Higher security locks are designed with restricted or paracentric keyways to inhibit the movement or access of picking tools. Slim-line tools should be made with as narrow a tang as possible, and no thicker than .020 inch. I routinely recomend .017 inch as the perfect thickness. The length of the tang as well as the pick tip should not exceed 1.25 inch unless you are designing a pick for an elongated keyway. The shorter length will help to compensate for the reduced strength in the thinner and more narrow tang.

Although Peterson uses .015 inch for their slender gem. I find that .015 deflects too easily and causes sensativity problems while providing very little in the way of extra clearance.

The Southord "S" rake is pretty much a double diamond. That particular design was also once known as the mountain and valley pick. Depending on which side you are using. It's two best functions are standard raking and dealing with a problematic low high low condition. Or a low high low, just depending. Because of the multiple peaks in the pick design, it works very much like a fast double rake technique.

The Southord "L" rake is actually an interesting design. I believe Barney Zion actually created this thing years and years ago at Majestic, and based it around a Dominion or Yale lock. It was originally based on an actual bitting profile, but it was later discovered that with a little rocking around, a huge variety of locks opened with this pick.

Now, the "W" rake in my opinion is a mess. Always has been, but it would have been created to deal with those locks that had short pins at the rear. It's another semi-profile design that can be used as a certain type of rake. It's only useful when you find you have very deep cuts in the 1 or 2 position.

The sort of designing you are looking at is very applicable to profile or wave picks. The same sort of picks that make up the HPC Comp-U-Pick set, and Majestic's "High Tech" pick sets.

The problem here is in finding the compromise between different types of locks. The reason these things work ISN'T necessarially because they duplicate the bitting, but because the pins can ride up and down the slopes of the profile, and sort of fall into position. This means that you don't want to completely follow the spacing specs, because the spacings are so close together. You actually want to spread it out a bit.

Imagine you made a pick profile from a thin piece of wire. If you could insert the wire into the lock as a key, it would perfectly match the bitting, and the lock would open. However, it wouldn't work as well as a pick. Now imagine that you grab the end of the wire and stretch it out a bit. Now you have created some slopes that the pins can ride on. The problem is that you have lowered the peaks. So you stretch out the spacings, but maintain some similarity for the peaks. Now, if you did this, but then squeezed it back together, it wouldn't match the original lock anymore because now the bitting is too high in places.

So, stretch it back out. Insert it into the lock, and ROCK it a little while gently moving in and out of the keyway. Shortly, the lock will pop open, and you will have created a functional "profile" rake.

You have to always remember, with pin tumbler pick designs, your goal is to aproximate the bitting of the key, or to pick pin by pin. Lever locks, and dimple locks are slightly different.

Good luck,
Romstar

[Heliox]

WOW. That really helps. I made a king pick today that needs a bit of finishing, and i'll try a queen pick this week. Otherwise, I'll play with some measurements and try to come up with a few good rakes. I think that the tension wrenches will have to wait for a new supply of street sweeper blades, but I'll have another handful of hooks and some rounds in a few days.

I went out and visited a friend today who has an old majestic set from about 1990 and got some good templates from him drawn on pick blanks. I suppose that my next problem will be to get some metal from smallparts and a bench grinder as i can only get precision cutting on a dremel grinding wheel for about 3 picks before the wheel wears away too irregularly to be very precise.

Any suggestions on tension wrench widths and thicknesses? Or is it basically whatever selection will get me into most keyways without blocking the pins?

The really unfortunate fact of the matter for me is that I have surrounded myself with high security locks like medeco and schlage primus (home and offices) due to my past lockpicking experience (other stuff sucksagainst people who really want surrepticious entry) so I'm having difficulty locating anthing that sucks enough for me to pick it. I guess there is a purpose for the lesser locks after all. I'll get a collection of several different types over the next few months to go with the 4 varieties of residential crap i have laying around.

Thank you for the help.

[Romstar]

North American style tension tools are actually pretty simple. They range in size from 1.5 mm to 4 mm in quarter millimeter steps. They are commonly made from flat strip of .65mm - 1mm thickness.

The two most common are single bend and twist flex. The other variation is double ended in either plain or twist flex style.

Old style European tension tools are more accurate and are designed to fit tightly into the keyway of the cylinder.

Beside this difference, European tools are commonly inserted vertically to the lock face, whereas the North American style is inserted horizontally to the lock face.

For tight fitting European style tools, you would normally use round wire of various guages and grind the flats onto the ends after they have been bent 90 degrees at the end.

Further, because of their construction, and the way they fit tightly into the keyway, european style tension bars are shorter because they fit snugly into the keyway.

The business end of your tension tools should not extend past 1.5 cm unless there is a specific purpose.

Double finger tension tools used for wafer locks are easily made from a strip of steel 1.3cm wide. Drill a hole into the steel near the end and use a file to finish the two fingers square. The fingers themselves should be aproximately 1.25 mm. After they are squared, bend the fingers 90 degrees and harden using a torch. Tempering may be required depending on the nature of the steel.

An interesting tension tool that doesn't fit any of the usual categories is the Schlage Everest tension tool. It is a two finger tool with an extremely long finger at the bottom and a short finger at the top. The purpose of the long finger is to lift the check pin found ar the rear of the keyway.
It is made in a manner very similar to the double finger tools, but requires much more attention to detail. A picture of this particular tool can be found at: http://www.peterson-international.com/tensiontools.htm

John Falle's double fingered tension tools are an excellent development in tension control, and you can duplicate these tools as you see the need. Look up the designs here on the forum, and you should be able to find them. Personally, I have found that I get the same amount of control from a tightly fitting European style single wrench but some people swear by Falle's tools.

The "Y" flex tools seen commonly for wafer and automotive wafer locks are normally beyond the average hobbiest to make as they are made from a folded piece of spring steel. However, you can also make them of two very wide pieces of strip spring steel riveted together and finished at the tips. The offset type shaped like the "tulip" style wrench is harder to make as it does require a much larger piece of spring steel. These are commonly stamped out of sheet, folded and riveted.

A basic form of circular tension ring can be made from a small bearing race if you can rivet, silver solder or braze the fingers onto the inner race of the bearing. Epoxy may work for a while, but I suspect it would soon go bad. If you have access to a small lathe, you would have much better luck in making circular tension tools. Especially the sping loaded and metered type

Good luck with your tools,
Romstar