A few days ago I received a couple .025" grade 5 Titanium sheets. Each sheet was 18.5"x 2.5" and cost about $11 a piece. I made a single pick out of the Ti yesterday and found it to be much harder to work with when compared to steel. It took an entire Dremel cutting disc to cut out the square of material for the pick. After that I used an bench grinder to remove the excess which went fairly quickly. I did the shaping using a Dremel 9903 bit which worked, but much much slower than steel. The final shaping was done with needle files which was also slow. I found that the material likes to "curl" on the edges when using either the grinder, 9903 bit, or a file. To remove the curl on the edges I used 120 grit sandpaper. All in all the process is pretty much the same as making a steel pick but takes maybe 5x as long and is harder on your tools.
The pick is strong and stiff like a standard steel pick but due to the amount of time and being rough on my tools I don't think I'll be making any more picks out of TI anytime soon.
