What do you use to sand

[skylar]

After spending countless hours hand sanding my home made picks.

I have decided that there needs to be a better way.

I am going to buy something to speed up this process and thought I would ask everyone what they are using for sanding.

So how are YOU sanding?

[Squelchtone]

After spending countless hours hand sanding my home made picks.

I have decided that there needs to be a better way.

I am going to buy something to speed up this process and thought I would ask everyone what they are using for sanding.

So how are YOU sanding?

Why are you sanding? To thin them down or to make them shiny? what material did you use to make your picks?

get some hacksaw blades or windshield wiper inserts and be done with it. trying to sand down things like steak knives or sawzall blades will just mean hours and hours of work, where a bench grinder wheel would get it done in 5 minutes.

This is why sometimes I argue that $30 spent on line at lockpickshop.com is a much better way to enjoy this hobby than to try to make a set and go crazy doing it.

Squelchtone

[skylar]

I am using drain snake, sweeper bristles and hack saw blades.

I guess that I am sanding them for the shine and the slide and not for the functionality as they work right off the grinder and being sanded with 180 grit paper.

I just would like all my picks to shine like a mirror.

[Squelchtone]

I am using drain snake, sweeper bristles and hack saw blades.

I guess that I am sanding them for the shine and the slide and not for the functionality as they work right off the grinder and being sanded with 180 grit paper.

I just would like all my picks to shine like a mirror.

There are guides here that tell you how to do it, look up Raimundo's Bogota guide, as well as many others.

With sweeper bristles I start with 200 wet sand paper, then move up to 400, 600, 800, and finally 1000, this will take time, lots of water, and patience, but in an hour or so you should have mirror finish picks.

good luck and have fun with it
Squelchtone

[skylar]

I think I have this down although it takes me more than an hour.

I would just like to know if anyone uses a palm sander, belt sander or rotary sander to speed up the process.

[raimundo]

I use various sticks with the sandpaper wrapped on and held with rubber bands on the end.

chopsticks, for the rounded valleys, and a paint stirrer stick from the hardware store for doing the flat areas.

I hold the work piece and move the workpiece across the stick, I do not move the sticks across the workpiece.

for final sanding, fold a piece of sand paper with the sand side inside, and push pull your pick shaft through this.

this is the best way to finish, not with lines that run across the pick shaft but with lines along it.

[pin_pusher]

bench grinder and dremel.