pick making, ace picks, sweeper bristle picks.

[raimundo]

An ace pick can be made from an ace key and hairpin sliders. requires some serious work. have a locksmith cut an ace key to the eighth depth in all seven places. use 4" needle files to cut grooves extending these places to the end of the tube. start with a triangular file, cut a v groove centered on the 8cut. this will guide the rest of the fileing, so get it straight. use a round needle file to open the v up into a u groove. final step is to square the edges of the groove with the edge of a flat file. be careful that these remain approximately perpendicular, the edges will keep the sliders in the groove, but if they are sloped, the sliders will come up out of the groove. if you used the four inch files, the size of the groove will be just right for the common small hair pin. to cut the fourth place, you will have to cut away part of the keyhandle, remove the key handle entirely, after using it to grip the piece in a benchvise. drill the end of the tube. put a bolt through the hole, and bolt on an extension tube. the sliders need only be long enough to enter the keyhole to the bottom, and extend out far enough to pass under three or four round rubber o rings you can buy in the plumbing section of the hardware store. This is about half the natural length of the hairpin. (bobbypin) the tips of the hairpin will probably be a bit thick to enter the keyway, so they shoud be filed thiner on the part of the end that enters the keyway, outside the keyway, their original width will be ok. cut them to equal lengths, use the hairpinbend as the fingertip handles you will need to press them to the zero reading that is the start of the picking process. This method does not include a notch pickup, this makes it easier to make, and easier to describe in this post. You do not necessarily need a notch pick up. turning pressure will bind some of the pins. The pin most tightly bound will pick first, when all the pins are picked, the (outer, [bottom]) pins will help you turn the core as they cannot pass the edges of the 8cut on the tip of your pick. when you have the pick and sliders assembled, set them to zero and fix them tightly in place with lots of rubberband wraps, and finish the ends with sand paper. 320 grit wrapped around the tip as far as it goes into the keyhole, and turn the whole pick int the wrap until the sliders are shaped down, then move on to 400 grit to begin the finish, finally move to 600 grit to make a smooth surface that will not create friction against the walls of the keyway. doing this will probably cause some rounding out of the tips of the sliders, so finally redress the tips so that they meet the pins with flat ends that do not enable the sliders to slip off. Create your own handle, but remember thumb and forfinger are all that is needed to hold the pick, the screwdriver handle on the hpc commercial pick is just too much handle and encourages force that works against the picking.

[raimundo]

Sweeper bristle lockpicks, In spite of what the unknowlegable may say, the flat steel from the curb brush of the street sweeper is excellent material to make picks from, you find them in a clean street, where the swirl marks of the sweeper are in the curb. look at the corner where the driver may hit the curb hard in the turn and break off some of the bristle. pick up all that are straight and long. wipe them with green scotchbrite pads under water to clean the surface rust, then use a heavy wirecutter to clip away the last half or threequarters inch near the fracture where it broke off. this part of the metal is surely workhardened and brittle. examine the piece for deep scratches, rust pits, and such, save the best stock for later, throw out the worst pieces and get your practice on some of the pieces that are pretty good. This way, you will get experience without wasting the best stock which you can use your experience on.
Cut two pieces to three and a half inches, and bend them together so that the last 3quarters of an inch make tensors on both of them. Notice that they fit together, one has a smaller radius than the other because they wer bent together. next, use two vise grip pliers, and the springs from two ballpoint clicker pens, place one of the pliers on long end, with enough straight material {inch and a half} to make the pick tips and shafts. place the second visegrip a quarter inch further from the first plier. toward the bend. put the ball point springs on both ends, these will tie them together so that they will not skew in the next step, which is making a quarter turn twist on the quarter inch of metal between the two pliers. If the twist starts fractures here, you were too close together. [also, some of the metal stock may have a brittle temper and be prone to cracking, but most of it is very good if it is not rusted and pitted like the stuff you threw away. in fact, you could make a few practice bends on that throwaway stuff to experience the bending process and learn what works and what breaks the metal. You now have two tensors fitted together, the long ends are suitable for carving picks into. Use a round file and put a groove near the end of the long part, use a flat file to cut away the shaft from the twist to the groove, use the flat file to slope the piece of metal in front of the groove and you will begin to see a halfdiamond pick taking shape, use the flat file on the side of the tip opposite the round groove following the curvature of that until you have a hook. finally, wrap black sand paper, the kind made for use on metal, not the stuff that is made for wood, wrap it around a bamboo chopstic, and smooth down the areas where you have been filing. fold sand paper over the pick shafts and push the pick in and out while counting to 100, this will smooth the metal where it makes most contact with the keyway, be sure to round the edges of the file cuts, round is much better than anything like a sharp edge. round will slip through the keyway easily, not hanging up on the various edges inside, and a smooth pick will let you feel the tumblers, not the roughness of the pick

[raimundo]

clarification, in the picks from sweeper bristles, note that i wrote "bend them together" to make two pieces that fit together, they have to be clamped together and bent simultaneously. in this way, the two pieces will have exactly complimentary curves. It is not possible to get this effect if each piece is bent separately. When you make a set of these bogota style picks, they are made to fit together. they can then be carried by pushing them inside a plastic tube, like the small straws found in bars and resturants, or you can make the ultimate carry device, from a ballpoint pen spring, and a safety pin. Lay the pen spring perpendiularily accross the back of the safety pin, and screw it until the end of the wire clicks off, then reverse direction and screw it on, until the spring is on the back strap of the saftey pin, lift the end of the coil spring and feed it into the loop of wire on the flexx end of the saftey pin and screw it on as far as it fits. this is the devise, you can push bogota picks into the penspring , start at the end that is in the flex loop of the safety pin, and put both pics through the spring. It helps to compress the spring when passing the twist in the pic set. this devise secures the picks and can be pinned to cloth anywhere. under your lapel, cuff, inside a pocket, or you can use it as a tie tac or just pin it to your t shirt like the emblem they wear on certain star trek series.

[Chucklz]

Raimundo...... you wouldn't happen to be the same Raimundo from yahoo locksports? With those simply gorgeous picks?