Coating Lockpicks

[snakeman15963]

I have found that after you have sanded down the lockpicks, that if you dip the pick into some candle wax and wipe off alot of the excess it will leave a thin coating of the wax that allows the picks to glide over the pins easier.

[Knows-Picker]

I do the same thing, but instead of wax, I use a nylon based clear nail polish...allow about 8 hours to dry...the result is a smooth, flawless finish that will deffinatly help you sliding the pick in and out...Make sure that it is a nylon based, or it will get gummy

[Gear Head]

Traditionally, many smiths coated the metal in beeswax while it was still hot. Does a good job, I would just be worried about it flaking off inside the lock. You could use gear grease or something nasty that won't go anywhere. I would imagine teflon spray/spray on would be kinda nice.

[TOWCH]

That's not a bad idea. Get some tool handle dip and rubber coat them. Maybe a plastic coating. I wonder if they would still scratch up the pins?

[Gear Head]

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Like one of those hard teflon coatings, instead of some rubbery crap, that would own.

[Gear Head]

Reason the rubber kinda scares me is I had one of those "The Locksmith" kits that had a set of double ended picks with heatshrink in the middle, and that was torn and flaking off on both ends, just from being outside of the keyway. It would be kinda cool to see some non metal picks made. If you wanted to go maniac with it, It would be cool to grab a few sheets of polymer and cut picks out of it. I forget the site but the stuff is pretty cheap, and comes in many different composites.

[vector40]

This is the first entirely new idea I've seen on the forums in a while. Really interested to see someone try this.

[snakeman15963]

I dunno it seems to me that if you were to try to make them out of polymer that it would have to be so thin that it would be too flexible to do much of anything, this is just my opinion, but i don't know much about polymer.