Homemade upgrade suggestions

[Brigham]

Ok, I made a homemade hook pick from a basic dental pick I bought from a hardware store near my house. It lasted a few months and was wonderful because it allowed for insanely sensitive feedback. The problem is that the metal is so soft that it breaks after about four months of use. It's good to practice with, but it's a chore to have to buy a new dental pick every four months! Any suggestions on similar, more sturdy products?

[SFGOON]

Okay - two things. 1. try being a little more gentle when you use your picks, it's doesn't take a lot of force to lift an individual pin, or twenty pins for that matter. Take it easy. 2. Try getting something commercially made - Peterson Picks tend not to break and are amoung the better brands out there. Making your own tools can be very gratifying, but as far as mastering the skill goes, you get a lot more consistency out of commercial tools.

[Kaellman]

There is plenty of posts about this. Both pick crafting and hardening, and good pick brands. All you have to do is to search.

[7mazrik]

Sometmes it is not the wisest choice to reinvent the wheel. Get your self a starters kit of lock picks, work with them. Make improvements on the designs that came with the set. I made one pick out of stinless spring steel, and shortened the edge of one my hooks to to fit small padlocks. do what works best for you/

[DeadlyHunter]

well if you have the cash you could get these...

http://www.hpcworld.com/Picks/p_ndpx.htm

if not maybe you could use some regular pick making materials - Hacksaw blades, street sweeper bristles, Plumber snake, etc...

[Shrub]

Polish the 'pick' end until it is shiney then heat it up with a lighter until it reaches a cherry red then instantly dunk it in cold clean water,

Then het it up again until it becomes a straw colour (dark yellow) then quench it straight away again,

What this does is firstly hardens the steel to a uniform roc gauge all the way through the material but leaves it brittle, the second heating takes this hardness and reduces it to take the brittleness out,

This should leave you with a suitable pick, if it still breaks easily its made of the wrong material,

The others are right, you can buy picks individualy and by the time you have bought 12 dental tools in a year with nothing to show afterwards instead you could have bought 3 or 4 decent commercial picks with the same money but have them for a life time (if you look after them).

[monkeE]

Don't quench after you get to straw. Let it air cool at that point. The tempering needs to allow the crystals to "get floppy" and air cooling does this. Quenching again allows the crystals to harden, and you might snap the pick after some use.

[Shrub]

You do actually quench after the straw as you are setting a hardness back into it, letting it air cool would also work but the edges will round off with prolonged use.

Quench in clean water or light oil,

[NKT]

Aren't dental picks already round?

I would let it cool from straw, as slowly as possible. Pack it in dry sand if you can. This will leave it strong but a little springy. Straw colour is what you want a penknife to be. It will bend before it shatters.

From blue to quench leaves the steel very, very hard, especially thin rods! Alas, the bending force you put on it will make it snap rather than bend, starting with little fractures in the surface, from where the cracks propagate.

Never heard of straw to quench before? As monkeE says, the point of going to straw is to let the crystal structure diffuse the carbon back into the structure, rather than leaving it on the boundaries. The slower the cooling, the further it can diffuse.

If you want more than you ever want to know, search for "(martensite and austenite) steel" (try ferrite and cementite too, there is a lot to learn!) in Google. Basically, you are changing the forms of steel into one another, and you want to get the balance just right.

[Shrub]

Personally im fine as ive been doing it for 20 years (engineering),

Brigham, do what you thinks best but to be honest the best thing to do would be to get some commercial ones, these are right in every way (if you get the right ones).