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Tungsten Carbide picks?

Picked all the easy locks and want to step up your game? Further your lock picking techniques, exchange pro tips, videos, lessons, and develop your skills here.

Re: Tungsten Carbide picks?

Postby 3-in-1 » 30 Mar 2012 6:49

T-C can be shaped with a green wheel but I think that you may be wasting your time. The beauty in the spring steel normally used is that over-amping it will generally result in a bent pick. With T-C, it will break off and now you get to remove it from the lock. And make another pick. If you are really interested in making a thinner stiffer pick I would experiment with learning how to harden and temper the high carb steel spring stock. A propane torch is all you need to start. Annealing hardened hi carb steel makes it very easy to file and bend. Careful polishing and reading of the temper colors will allow you to make picks and wrenches exactly how you like them. You may find that this learning experience to be even more interesting and useful than picking the lock.
3-in-1
 
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Joined: 25 Jan 2012 5:07

Re: Tungsten Carbide picks?

Postby DYI » 12 Apr 2012 20:59

If you are really interested in making a thinner stiffer pick I would experiment with learning how to harden and temper the high carb steel spring stock.


Here's the somewhat non-intuitive bit: heat treatment actually does very little to the stiffness of steel (stiffness being defined by the Young's modulus, which relates strain to applied stress). To do that, you either need high alloying, or an entirely different material. Having recently bought some nice 301 spring steel picks, I can't see having to apply any more force than I can with them. However, I'm still going to take a crack at different pick materials in the summer. Carbide may well have issues with brittle fracture. I'm also interested in trying a ~90% tungsten heavy alloy, which should have an elastic modulus roughly twice that of steel. Considering that these alloys come standard with sufficiently high tensile strengths and are considerably more workable than carbide (while having about 70% the Young's modulus), they may be a better option.
DYI
 
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