nostromo wrote:I'm afraid Locksport is a gearhound hobby, "The Locksmith". You'll have to spend a lot of time with the various pick sets to see what you favor in handles, tip profile, steel, and shank for various situations. Is there a Locksport group anywhere near you that you can spend a little time trying the various picks before you make a purchase?
Richard at SoSpec was kind enough to do me up a pickset with a variety of the rippled / laminated handle combinations and I ended up favoring the plain laminated handle. It did not feel as heavy as the double laminated rippled handle, a bit more responsive. The rippled handles do sort of give you a different feel in the hand if you can turn them over, but that's only the ball rakes, really.
I mentioned the 'gear hound' aspect of the hobby? Well, after you check out these two you still have the composite rubber covered, mild banana shaped plastic handles with vacuum deposition coated tips like Klom, the plain plastic handled $6 hook pick set from Deal Extreme, Lishi auto picks, HPC carbon steel and computer patterns, rocker picks, jigglers, Falle sweeps, Raimundo's Bogota Rake . . .
So far that's just pin and wafer locks. How about lever tumblers? Safes? I love it!
And there are all kinds of specialty manual picks, mechanical picks, and electric ones. And automobile lockouts. Bypass tools. And if you start getting interested in coming up with your own methods, there are machinist type tools to get into the locks and / or make your own tools.
It's a great hobby!! A lifetime hobby. You'll never be bored. You'll probably settle on a few favorites, but ya just GOTTA try out the other stuff!!
Nostromo, thanks for the reply, I was browsing here and happened to see and recognise this post. I have no idea whether or not there is a Locksport community near me, but I highly doubt it. Because you see, I live in British Columbia, Canada, where only locksmiths or similarly qualified persons are even allowed to own lockpicks; and I am nothing more than a young apprentice who got laid off from a local lockshop in January 2009. I've applied there since, as well as at the two other lockshops in town, but so far nothing. The main picks we had there were HPC, and they were all right; but it's been a while since I did any picking. I would love to be able to do picking and stuff like that; but because (to my understanding) I can't do that without violating the law, I won't. I'd love to get back into it, though.
Davis
