Dremeled my first DIY Falle Pick--opinions?

[devildog]

WOOHOO! I just dremeled out this Falle deep curve pick, and I'm quite proud of myself, if I do say so, um, well, myself



If you'll look at Cracksman's Falle temp he has posted, out of the three deep curve picks, it's the middle one that has '3' on the left and '4' on the right.

(Yes, I finally bought a Dremel--just got it two days ago at home depot; it's the 395 Multi-Pro kit thing; they're on sale at all the Home Depots, Wal-Marts, etc. because of the 400 XPR just coming out, so you may want to look into snatching one up).

This is the very first thing I've dremeled with my new toy, not to mention my first totally DIY pick. I'm so proud of myself; I really do understand now why people are so obstinant and proud about making something themselves instead of buying it--you should be!

All I did was print out Cracksman's Falle temp, which I'm very much grateful for (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), cut out the pick I wanted to duplicate, outline it onto a hacksaw blade, cut out a rough version with the disc cutter bit, grind down the rest with the aluminum oxide drum thing (I think that's what it is--I read the WHOLE manual, I swear), and then polish it up with the gray disc (aluminum silicate, I think? I just used the chart that came with it). I just need to round out the tips a tiny bit with a file, and then polish it with some 600 grit sandpaper (haven't yet decided whether I'll take the felt polishing wheel to it after the sandpaper--should I?), and it'll be lovely.

Question--Does anyone think I should leave the finish the way it is, because it kinda looks cool with the gray (from the paint) circular marks from the polishing disc on top of the shiny steel (it's a lot shinier than it is in the photo)?

By the way, I couldn't wait so as soon as I came from polishing it I stuck it in a Master 140 and opened it in about 15 seconds, a wee bit faster than usual--yes, it really does work

[zeke79]

looks real good. If it were me I would smooth out the lines with a round file then do my fine sanding to smooth the edges. Wrap your sandpaper around a chopstick or a small piece of wooden dowel to make your life easier while sanding. You're definately off to a good start. Way to go!

[Chrispy]

Well done devildog. As zeke said, just smooth out the lines. Good job.

[pretender]

easier/faster/effective method:

use grinding wheel attachment on your dremel to do the shape (the burgundy, 1/8" thick one) then sand pick with 300, 400, and 600 grit paper successively.

little bit of practice grinding will give you perfect shapes that you'll just have to clean up with sandpaper.

[Mad Mick]

Nice first try, but I'm going to be a little critical here...the hook on the left hand side looks ok, but the one on the right is maybe a little thin and has a more definite thinning, in one spot, towards the tip. (unless it's just my web-accelerator messing with the image...if so, ignore me)

Try roughing out the next pick, but leave a little more meat on the inital shape, since the finish work can end up removing much more material than you anticipated...especially with a powered tool. (I've donated plenty of sub-standard picks to the trash men, should they wish to look for them. )

[cracksman]

Congrats devildog I agree with Mick, it could use a little work, but it's a h e l l of a lot better than my first attempts Keep it up, I'd like to see what else you come up with. If you got the jewelers polish with your dremel, use that with the felt if you want to make it shiny.

[treboR]

Looks alot better than my first pick.(Filed down allen wrench with a bent tip)

[kspec]

i would suggest using the polish also it does work wonders...but i would also suggest to sand it with 400 grit wet sanding at least i like to go alot higher but thats me

[devildog]

Internet is down...Using computer lab at school...NOT happy...

Thanks for all the compliments. Yeah, it did get thinned out a bit much, but it's been fixed up a good bit now, and is quite shiny. I'll post pics of it and the other one I'm going to make (believe it's the 5/6 hook). Just bought a $8 tungsten carbide cutter bit thing for the Dremel; figured I could use it to just cut the shape out of the hacksaw blade. We'll try that and see how it works, and I'll definately leave a lot more material on this time. I'll probably pick up some grit slurry next time I'm at Home Depot.

Say, do we have any good templates with measurements and good descriptions of the Falle wrenches? If not...oh, Cracksman .... (if you do it, maybe disassemble the wrenches as best you can so we can see all the various parts we'll need to be getting?)

[devildog]

Ok, here we go:



They're not quite perfect yet (I need to remake them anyway for reasons that will be obvious in a minute), but they certainly beat the crap out of a regular hook! I must say that I even prefer them to my Petersons that I recently got, including the Reach tool. They polished up quite nicely, although you can't really see that too well in the picture for some reason. I mainly used the grey polishing wheel and some 600 grit sandpaper.

Does anyone have a suggestion on the best way to get the paint off of these bloody hacksaw blades? The first time I tried the grey polishing wheel, and that took forever and took off too much material, I think. On the second one, I used the sandpaper drum which scratched the crap out of it, as you can see (it feels smooth after the 600 grit/metal polish treatment, but still, it looks horrible ).

Now, I must point out something about Cracksman's Falle temps--I know you said they should print out at the real size, but either I screwed up the file (I printed it out just as it was after I downloaded it) or that picture isn't 1:1. I was kinda wondering why my homemade Falle's felt a little long and gangly, and then I noticed the ruler in the picture I had printed out, and thought, "jeeeeeezz, that's a BIG inch!" , proceeded to measure it and saw that the scale was about 40% bigger than it should be, going by the ruler pictured. I played around with it in photoshop until I got it so that the ruler pictured matched a real one when printed out. Here you can see, from top to bottom, my picks, the original print out from the unaltered picture from Cracksman's post, and then the scaled-down printout, all next to a ruler for comparison:



Anyone?

[Minion]

You could have had a printer option that stated "scale to page"... then it did.

That's all I can figure.

Beautiful looking picks.

It looks like you made the right-curve on the top pic (in the ruler picture) a little deep, though.

[devildog]

Ok, here we go. Here's the latest one, and this time it's *about* the right size (a wee bit short, but it still picks just fine ). I'm showing it next to a ruler and a Peterson hook for scale, and the picture as well as the other two below it are 1:1 dead on (real size). The two below it are from Cracksman's Falle temp, one is just a cut out, and the other is the negative of that cut out that I really increased the brightness and contrast on in photoshop to help make the picks really stand out from the background.

[Mad Mick]

That's nice dev, good work. Once you get comfortable with the tools (as you now appear to be) the process speeds up a lot. You'll soon be cranking them out like teens having babies.

[devildog]

Yeah, but they just don't seem to come out looking EXACTLY like the real ones like I want them to. I just can't seem to get them to have precisely the correct dimensions and angles. By the way, that's supposed to be a 5/6 pick.

What exactly can I do to get them coming out just like the temps? Whats the best way of getting an outline from the temp onto the hacksaw blade in the most accurate way possible?

[cracksman]

Sorry about the size mix up, I just printed
it out, and they came out tiny I've
heard people cutting out the template and
super glueing it to the stock. Honestly, that
last one looks great, minor irregularities
should not be a problem in any case.

I'm going to try and get a better template up
soon. I've been using the #2 lately of the 1-2
I really like it.

*Does anyone know of the Falle patent on these
picks?