Heres my homemade pickgun

[ruski]

I tried to model it after the southord "Pick Guns" book. I used a coathanger. I have one question though how do I make a tip for it?

[iworathong]

pound it with a hammer cut it to length and then taper and grind to about the size of a hook but straight with no hook. not bad i like that book. =D

[silent]

looks like contemporary art, but functional

[digital_blue]

Hi ruski,

I have made several of these, with a slightly different design. I got the information off this site. If you search for "pick guns" or, perhaps, "snap picks" you will find the thread with some nice picks. I used a dremel with a grind wheel to grind the coat hanger wire flat on 2 sides (quench in water often so it won't heat up).

One suggestion though... use a thicker coat hanger. The snap picks I've made out of a thicker gauge coat hanger actually work better than the commercially produced Southord one I own.

Hope this helps some.

[Peaky]

Check out pyros thread on these and you will be enlightened, use the search to find it.

[ruski]

I made a new one, the old one was just too ugly, and didnt work right.

[skold]

how well does this one work??

[xodishox]

yeh the second one looks a bit complicated, its supposed to have the shape of a gun so you can hold it with one hand and pull the trigger

[silent]

The coat hanger metal is almost too soft on regular coat hangers. They dont work very good if they are normal coathanger, I can get mine to open some cheap kwiksets, but nothing else.

Try the tip of a hairpen to the tip of your pick-gun with scotch tape, scoth tape works the best for it. It makes the coat hanger pickgun a little bit more effective

[fugi]

I made mine out of a welding rod, better than my first coathanger model which bent after a few uses. bench grinder helps alot if you're making these.

[BLY]

I used a few different types of metal to make these and the best I've found so far is a welding rod.

I didn't have any grinding tips for the dremel at the time so, I used a hammer to flatten the end. I found that the rod, forward of where the 'snap' occurs, was too long (6") and didn't have enough snap to it, so I cut it down to about 3".

I made one with the trigger like pictured in the first post but, I couldn't get it to work. I snipped off the trigger and use my thumb to press down on the top... the same way you use the snap pick ruski posted, which is a much easier way to operate it.
I also found that since a trigger is no longer used, I need to hold the 'gun' aiming to my left when held in my right hand - it's just easier to work with.

Oh, and both of them work but, I haven't tried many locks with them yet. The first lock I tried it on was a Schlage deadbolt and after about 3 or four clicks it opened right up.

It's nice but I do prefer single picks.

[BLY]

Oops, no edit button!

One thing people seem to get wrong, is which way the gun is held. Like the one pictured in ruski's post, it's upside down - that is, if the pins in the lock are on top. If the pins are on the bottom, it would be used the way it is pictured.... Which I imagine would be rather tricky.