Newbie Homebrew pick pictures

[dbras]

Hello This is my first post. I have been lurking around on the boards for a couple of weeks and have learned alot. To start with I had ordered a jack knife, and was able to do ok with it, but after reading many posts on here I decided to make my own picks. I bought a cheap rotary tool at northern tool, that came with 200+ assorted attachments and then set about getting materails to make picks. I bought a couple of hacksaw blades, but they took forever to grind down with just the rotary tool. I went to a local junk yard and got wiper inserts from about 20 cars for $3. Most of these are only suitable for making tension wrenches because they are not wide enough to grind picks from, but I got 4 of them from an old dump truck that were wide enough. I made a couple of tension wrenches and 6 picks to start with. I coated the handles with plasti-dip that bought at home depot and dipped the picks in them around 5 times over several hours. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished products. They work great!! I have only been practicing on a small master padlock, and a kwikset doorknob, but with great success. Please feel free to give me any comments or advice.

[mr_chris79]

They look good to me mate even if they are GIANT SIZED Im sure your fellow pickmakers will give you plenty of tips for your next set have fun!

[femurat]

Hi dbras,

welcome to the forum. I have 2 suggestions for you:

1 - resize images before posting them. I had to disable images in my browser to read your post;

2 - your picks are very well made for a newbie. Their shapes are precise and proportioned. From the pictures I can clearly see the bumped surface of the sides. This is a typical effect of rotary tools. I think you need to sand them smooth and flat, otherwise you'll get a lot of false feedback. Try to sand just the sides with some sandpaper wrapped around a flat piece of wood.

Good luck

[raimundo]

Buy the assortment pack of sand paper at Ace hardware store, wrap the rough grit, (220) half a sheet tightly around one of those wooden paint stirrer sticks that the hardware will give you, if you ask, tell them that your making sanding sticks and need 3 of them for the rough medium and fine grits.
wrap half a sheet around a sanding stick (whole sheet is too much,) cut the sheet with a craft knife from the paper side or an old sissors, and tighten it down on the paint stirrer with rubber bands on both ends. Hold the stick against something solid to support the other end, and move the pick back and forth over the stick using the rough grit until the shape evens out, then medium grit to reduce the marks from the rough grit, then find grit to reduce the marks from medium grit. end by folding a piece of fine grit over the pick and pushing it in and out so that the marks of this final step are parrallel to the pickshaft and cross the previous sanding marks at something around 90 degrees. You will like your picks much better and they will move in the tumblers like they were oiled. you also should probably cut the shapes of future picks using some small flat files to create straighter edges, your power tool is not the best tool for getting the final shape, as its hard to control and quickly may go too deep.

[Dreadwyrm]

The best picks are made with angle grinder out of a wood saw blade
The best type of steel is the blade of a wood saw

[jamesphilhulk2]

A LOT of sanding is required to smooth those out, also the the size of the pictures are way too big, PM a mod to get them re-sized