by raimundo » 12 Aug 2009 8:17
You make picks and you need dimensions to make them smaller?
You are too dependent on others... cut the rope, cast adrift and make a decision of your own, you'll probably be happily surprised,
Don't think that homemade picks must follow the dimensions of the commercial picks, those picks were just copies of homemade picks that someone with a punch press copied. For profit, not necessarily for dimensional correctness, in fact, many commercial picks are actually too wide for universal use, just because they expect customers to be beginners with heavy pressure on the pins. And for non beginners who started with this commercial crap and never learned to use thin picks and light pressure.
Make your thin pick then if it bends in use, the next one will be slightly larger. Decide on the dimensions yourself. dont make it longer shafted than a 6 pin key unless you have some reason to need a bit of standoff to your hand, and even then, the part that appears outside the keyway need not be thin shafted.
A skeleton key is an old lever type key that has all the fat trimmed off it so it fits loosely in the lock. this passes more wards and delivers only the amount of strength that is actually needed for opening the lock, while the original key may be over strenghtened for years of use by the kind of people who break keys.
Skeletonization is important in picks also, picks are not made to simulate keys, they are made to move very freely in the keyspace that the key fills up.
The more you skeletonize a pick, that is trim the fat off it, the more universal it is when you encounter paracentric keyways, and the lighter pressure can pick more locks than heavy prybars sold commercially as picks.
You should also smooth the picks shaft and tip and round off all edges to reduce the interaction with wards.
do not have a thin area on the pick that is of very short length, as this creates a point that the rest of the pick can overpower and concentrate stress on, Thin is good but the areas that are thin should be long enough to flex and return rather than a short lenth that will only bend and set in a bend prior to breaking.
take two pliers and grip a wire like a coat hanger, three inchs apart, you can bend that just a little and it will spring back, but if you reduce the length between the pliers, the bend will tend to set. and if there is no room between the pliers, it will break the wire,
No pick should have to bend more than just a little if the picker understands what he's doing, If the lock actually requires heavy tension, then use southord of course. no reason to break good picks using them as prybars.
Wake up and smell the Kafka!!!
