by BrownDwarf » 16 Mar 2005 11:39
I've been playing with a set of Dino Navigator picks. As others have noted, they are made from a variety of thicknesses of stock, ranging from a half millimeter up to one millimeter hook. [To put this into context, other manufacturers seem to work at about a half millimeter.]
We know that the venerable Master #3 isn't much of a challenge, but I've gone through my stable of six of them several times, first using a traditional half-millimeter hook, and then using the fatter one. May be my imagination, but I find the fat one easier to use, possibly because its width forces the very tip of the hook to ride squarely on the pins.
The fat wrenches are a different story. As long as it doesn't shift positions in the keyway, I find the longest standard wrench [turning tool?] with a twist on the shaft to give better feedback as I'm working a lock. As others have noted, perhaps a third of the time I'll open a lock by easing off the pressure on the wrench just a tad, allowing a pin I've forced too far down to pop back up to the shear line.
