My homemade pick

[mattc]

Street sweeper bristles (from Quicklocks) mainly, with heatshrink handles. I'm trying wiper blade inserts, but with limited success - more an issue of technique I guess, as I'm still relatively new to pick making.

[omelet]

some of those picks look like they are in danger of breaking inside a lock. Make sure not to have too thin of a section prior to a wide section; more of a taper, or constant width is best design. Especially with those bristles which seem to have rust pock marks, you should really try to sand those smooth to avoid stress concentration.

[mattc]

Thanks for the input Omelet, something to bear in mind for the next batch. Some of them are just experiments in shape and perhaps came out thinner than I'd anticipated.

[Geek142]

Hey

Sometime i hate it when i am grinding then i get side tracked for a second like i get a fly in my safety glass's and sometimes i slip and grind something that shouldnt be there. I have lost 2 picks from those stupid flys Grrrr

Geek

[Geek142]

Hey

I am planning on buying some slim-lines but i like making picks aswell, i thought i would try give it ago and use metal egg flippers, the metal seems strong a flexible and its thin enough. Has anyone else ever tried this before i think that it would be cool to make your own homemade slim-lines even though i am going to buy some. Does anyone else have an idea for another material that might be useful?

Geek

[omelet]

don't use egg flippers!! that would be a tragedy, how would you make eggs?

/me cries

[Geek142]

Buy another one

[NKT]

Go and buy a couple of sets of feeler gauges. About $3 each, I suspect, as they are £3 over here. Unscrew the holder, and you have lots of nice spring stainless steel.

Work on it with a sharpie until you are happy, then do a marathon session and grind them to shape on a bench grinder, or with a dremel. Then take off the last tiny bits with a hand stone (if you aren't good with the grinder) and hone any rough bits.

You now have picks from one know thickness to another, and the thinnest ones can be used as shims. There are a few of the thinner ones that are too thick for shims and too thin for picks that go to waste, but hey...

[master in training]

could you turn the ones that are too thin for picks and too think for shims to make light tension tools? i imagine they would be very springy and give quite good feedback, without allowing too much tension to be put on a lock becuase they would bend a bit.

[NKT]

Actually, I've made them into picks as well, since they are still quite rigid, but thin enough to bend round some of the tighter keyways. I turned them into deep curve picks. Very effective, though slightly tricker than a rake or diamond.

[master in training]

cool, i've been having trouble getting a pick into one of my locks with a particularly nasty keyway, i might try and make some of these when i get some money.

[Geek142]

Well i figured out the other day when i tried it on metal similar, that you have to quench really really frequently or the metal gets to soft.

Geek

[helix]

Hey Geek142.

Apart from my feeler guage picks, ALL my picks are made from
wool bale hooks, straightened.
THEY are awesome.
I haven't got around to tempering them yet, but to
tell you the truth, I don't reckon that there is any urgent rush to.

[Geek142]

Hey

Ok. I make mine out of highspeed steel hacksaw blades. I need to make some new hooks and diamonds.

Geek

[raimundo]

Rather than a set of feeler gauges, in all the various thicknesses, when you already know how thick you want it, you can buy individual feeler guages about a half inch wide and a foot long, from a machinests supplier. You can by multiples of the ones you want, and depending on how long the picks you make are, you can get a number of them from a foot long feeler guage. the metal will crack on a line scored by a tungsten scriber point. (not as easily as glass, and sometimes I use a triangular needle file to lead in the edge of the fracture at the edge of the metal, but it works and nothing is wasted in kurf.