Anybody tried clock spring metal for picks and wrenches?

[MrB]

When I was little I used to really enjoy taking old clocks apart. Lots of wonderful cogs and gears to play with. And of course, the springs!

Of all the many and varied pick materials, I don't recall anybody talking about clock springs.

Has anyone tried them?

The metal is very hard, so I think you would have to anneal it to make it easy to work and then temper it again afterwards, but otherwise I think it could be really good stuff.

[Geek142]

I have thought of that myself.....

But the clock i took apart the clock hands were very thin but flexible and there is a chance that they will snap in the lock and since the material is very flexible i dont think if you used it for a tension wrench either would give enough tension to turn the cylinder unless you only need light tension.

But it does depend on the clock hands you have....

Catch ya

[MrB]

But I didn't say clock hands, though. I said clock springs.

Those are the things that, before the days of quartz movements, stored the energy to make the hands go round.

If you can find an old mechanical clock of the wind-up variety, it will have at least one spring in it, maybe two if it is an alarm clock.

The spring is usually contained inside a brass case which you have to take apart. One of the main downsides is that when you uncoil the spring, it doesn't. (Uncoil that is.) So by default you are going to end up with bent picks. But with care, you can straighten out a piece of the spring by bending it in the opposite direction to the normal bend.

Unfortunately I don't have any springs to experiment with any more because all my junk got thrown out when I moved.

By the way, anyone else have that problem with women? "What do you need all those old scraps of metal and wood and stuff for? It's junk--throw it out!"

[Geek142]

Oh ok

I have a mum i understand that lol

[raimundo]

the type of pick that is made of clock spring metal is called the matador and is used on dimple locks. If you want to get creative, you can make a pick of several layers of spring and perhaps have them move independently a little bit, like one of my medeco designs, that hasn't yet been proved, but not tried enough to be disproven.