Here's a SCAN of some of the picks i've made over the past month or so.
The full image is at 300DPI, so to figure out the sizes, divide the pixels by 300 to get inches.
From left to right, I have my three half diamond rakes, my queen and king picks, and my two hooks. The first hook is an experiment in being able to grasp the tip of the pin, the second is an effort to exceed the MACS on a few locks that I have. The last pick is a standard southord hook, as you can see from the handle.
Per my previous post on how i make them, I sand them with 600 grit sandpaper after a deburrign with the dremel sandpaper disks. Afterward, I buff them with polishing compound.
Theya are almost a mirror finish, but due to the scanner, you don't see a reflection, only a matte gray. The bumps on the edges that look like craters are actually slight rounding that reflect the scanner light oddly. In this image, my more narrow hook and the queen are very highly polished (can watch tv in the reflection). The picks are made from Home Depot plumbing snake.
At this point, I've almost run out of locks that I can't pick in under 30 seconds with the homemade picks and I absolutely prefer my narrow hook to the southord. I have designs for a few rakes that I'm working on and I've almost decided that the dremel emery cutoff wheels are better than the silicon carbide grinding stones.
