The sawtooth rakes: I got to thinking about these because I saw several videos on Youtube in which fairly nasty looking dimple locks were easily opened with a tool like this. My thoughts were to put together a set with different "coarseness" of teeth, that way there would likely be one rake whose spacing closely matches that of any given lock. Scott ended up consulting with Lockpickinglawyer regarding the exact spacings to use. I ordered only 4, but Scott hooked me up with 5, so I'm pretty happy with that. I had these made in 0.035. The reason is that when used in a dimple lock the pressure will be on the flat side of the picks rather than against the edge as would be the case in a normal pin-tumbler lock. The extra thickness will help make sure the tip of the rake isn't flexing up too much. That's the theory anyway. I'll report back after I've had a chance to use them. So far I've only tried them on two locks. They easily opened a cheapo import lock, and they did *not* get me anywhere on a Sargent Keso, which was hardly surprising. I tried the finest one on a 7-pin BEST and a 5-pin Abus that I knew to have fairly flat bittings and it opened both of those up
The city rakes: Everyone knows the basic city rake, I think. Peterson started selling a set of "mini citys". One of them is just the standard city rake scaled down to a miniature size, but the others in the set are variations on the standard city rake design--the relative "high" and "low" spots are moved around. Some are wider in the center, others are wider near one end or the other, etc. That's a great idea and all, but why not make those in "full size"? Since this is more of a rocking style of tool the serrated length needs to approximately match that of the pin area in the lock. Having a very short "mini city" is great for small locks but far too short for a standard lock. So I asked Scott to scale up the other "mini city" profiles to the same size as a standard city rake. These are .025" I have not experimented with these yet.
The final rake pictured is one of Rare Element's own designs, the "Houdoo Rake". I had intended to buy one anyway, but Scott offered to throw one in with my order as a freebie, so I took him up on that! I haven't had a chance to use it much yet, but I did try it on a few locks and it seems every bit as effective as a standard bogie. What's nice is you can flip it over and get a totally different pitch of rake all in the same tool.
All the rakes are made from steel shim stock. The steel is nice and stiff and I couldn't find any evidence of overheating during grinding on the metal. They are all hand-polished to a really nice standard--I couldn't find any burrs or sharp edges anywhere. They fit nice and smooth in the lock. The finish is a light bluing. Scott did offer to heat-shrink the handles for me, but I already have my own heat shrink & color code so I asked him to send them plain.
So far I'm very happy with the quality of these picks. Now whether my ideas are particularly worthwhile or not is a different question that time will tell.
Obligatory disclaimer: With the exception of the two "freebies" I mentioned above, I paid full price for these picks. I have no financial interest in RareElement Lockpicks.
