A few tips and tricks on making your own tools

[Brianpojo56]

I've always been adamant that home made tools are the best and most economic way to accomplish small tasks. I can't count how many times I was thumbing through a locksmith distributor catalog thinking to myself "I could make one of those". So here's a few of my pointers on making your own tools.

Picks can be made from almost anything. A really good source of steel for making picks is old hacksaw blades. Your not wasting anything because most throw out hacksaw blades once the teeth are worn down. Take a 12 incher and snap it into thirds and you've got the makings for three picks of your choice. Of course you'll need a grinder and a vise and some hand files. Another thing you'll want is a blow torch so you can get the temper just right. Too much temper makes them snap and too little will make it bend to easily.

Tension wrenches can be made from the metal clips on pens or knives. As well, you can sometimes find spring steel at the hardware store. Or just order some. (Keep in mind, before bending spring steel you need to remove the temper, and once your done bending retemper it).

A very decent key extractor can be made from a straightened out fishing hook. (again heat it up before bending it, and use pliers unless you like blisters :P)

I was so excited when my boss got me a new set of HPC picks for Christmas one year. After a week I went straight back to my homemade halfdiamond.

Another pointer: If you have a favorite pick that you don't think you could do without, make sure you have a duplicate. Anything can happen out in the field. Your pick can snap, bend or even be melted. I was working on an old Harley and my co-worker told me to try to pick the ignition. Still to this day I don't know how the heck it happened but as soon I made contact with the lock, it arc-welded my pick and I was left with a tiny ball of melted spring steel. Another moral of this story is be careful when working on any cylinders dealing with electricity (ignitions, switches, etc.)

[savs2k]

thats odd there shouldnt be any voltage going through the ignition its self.

[Brianpojo56]

That's why I didn't think twice before sticking my favorite pick in there. To be honest I still don't completely understand what happened. For one I didn't think a 12 volt motorcycle battery had enough amps to melt spring steel in a split second. On top of that, I have no idea how the pick was able to touch two separate live contacts that were insulated from one another. All I know is that the owner of the motorcycle hotwired the bike to drive it to the shop in order to save himself the service call charge. After what happened, we told him to take it to the dealership.

[Raymond]

What probably happened was that your pick went too deeply through the lock and into the electrical switch behind it. There it touched one hot wire and used the lock case as the ground. I know, it happended to me also. Makes you hurt yourself from jumping back. The normal key never goes far enough to touch anything.

[Brianpojo56]

That makes sense, but it happened as soon as the pick made contact with the first wafer.

[cppdungeon]

So true, i had a home made hacksaw-pick for a couple of years till i bent it. T_T i was so sad, and to this day, nothing feels like it did, although i have a similar one.

[Engineer]

This one made my eyes water. A car battery for example can throw a spanner into the air and it will come down melted. It might be rated at 65A or whatever for starting, but the short-circuit current will be hundreds of amps.

Even a motorcyle battery is lead-acid technology, so you could could get perhaps 300A? In reality it would be a lot less, because of the resistance of the wires and the contacts inside the switch. Even so, there's enough potential power to melt or vaporise a pick with no problem. The thing that gets me is HOW the voltage came into contact with the pick?

Thinking about it, if the switch was designed that way, it would mean that the key itself was becoming part of the circuit, with the full starting current being drawn through it. I doubt any key would last long being treated like that. More importantly, it would mean the pins/wafers in the lock were part of the circuit as well and they certainly wouldn't last.

My first thought is also that your pick went too deep and shorted out the switch part. If you are certain it didn't, then perhaps the switch was faulty? Re-reading your post though, I think I might have got it? If the customer hot-wired the switch to get it to the shop, what if he mixed the wires up? So that the case of the switch (normally earth, or the negative side of the battery in this case) became live? Now this would normally blow the bike's fuses, unless the switch was electrically isolated from the bike's chassis, or so rusty that it made really bad electrical contact?

Whatever, I'm sure glad you posted this, as between yourself and Raymond, clearly under certain circumstances, you can lose your pick. I'm going to be a lot more careful when working on ignitions in future - THANKS!