Its free, best material to make picks!!!

[jtanner]

Hi, Im a newbie. But, I have made a few picks of my own. I have found a great material to make your own picks from. Its not really a secret, but I havent seen it mentioned yet. For those of you who live near a garment plant or apparel plant, you will be able to get the best stuff to make picks from FREE! If you have any garment or apparel plants, give them a call and ask do they have a fabric cutting department. If they do here is what you need. The electric fabric knives they use have blades that must be replaced after a while. However, the old blades can still be put to good use. They will throw away the old blades, so simply ask if they will give you the old ones when they pull them off. But, be careful, even though the blades are too dull to cut the fabric when removed, they are still very very razor sharp to the human touch. They can do some damage to the sharp edge is dulled using a grinder or etc. Here is what a knife blade looks like. It has about 10" of usable length and are aobut 3/4" wide.
The thickness is about 0.50mm thick ( a decent guess eyeballing it with a feeler guage.) They are made from a nice quality high speed steel. I make my picks from this. It may be a little thick for some applications such as a small lock with a veryvery thin keyway. But they work wonderful for every lock I have tried. I dont know how thick most production picks are. The steel is slightly flexible, but doesnt bend and stay bent. Springs back perfectly straight every time. Way better than anything else I have every tried to make a pick from.
Just an Idea. If anyone get some of these, I would like to know their opinion of this material.
Good Luck

[MrB]

Well hey, congratulations! I think you may just have come up with something that nobody has mentioned before. Well done!

(Note: I'm really not being sarcastic here. I genuinely don't think I have seen any mention of fabric cutting blades as pick material before, although any kind of thin and strong steel blade is a likely candidate.)

[wtf|pickproof?]

Have you made from it picks yet? If so let us have a glimpse on them and please tell us if they work fine for you.

wtf|pickproof?

[Buggs41]

I make my picks from this. It may be a little thick for some applications such as a small lock with a veryvery thin keyway. But they work wonderful for every lock I have tried. I dont know how thick most production picks are. The steel is slightly flexible, but doesnt bend and stay bent. Springs back perfectly straight every time. Way better than anything else I have every tried to make a pick from.
Just an Idea. If anyone get some of these, I would like to know their opinion of this material.
Good Luck

I guess he has.

[pretender]

I dunno - I'm still a pretty big fan of your simple, elegant, extremely cheap hacksaw blade. $3 at a hardware store and you can grind yourself a decent little pickset from the material - best of all, the cheaper they are, the better it usually is.

*shrug*

Windshield wiper material works good too - i put together an 8 pick set that rolls up to about the size of a small pinky finger or so, and they work entirely too well for most applications.

[Shrub]

Great thinking and a good tip,

It hasnt been mentioned before so well done,

I am a big beleiver in the saw blades but will start thinking out the box a bit more to find an alternitive material, i along with most regulars have just got used to hacksaw blades as being one of the best and most used materials so tend to only suggest that to newbies which is perhaps wrong and stiffles new ideas a bit,

Well done

[wtf|pickproof?]

I made my first homemade pickset out of wiper-inlays but i thing they bend too easy and wear off quickly. All in all i use wiper-inlays mostly for tension wrenches.

Buggs: yeah, im shure he has, youre right. nevertheless I'm intrested how well they work for him.

wtf|pickproof?