Using Bicycle spokes

[Timmy321]

I noticed while watching the pyro video how he just snaps the hacksaw blade into like that! What's to keep it from just *snapping* off in the lock

[macaba]

As well as the fact that if you are really worryied about this happening, you COULD temper the metal (heating it to a dull red, then dunking it in water), what Pyro is doing is applying a SHEAR force, a force that shouldn't happen during normal use. I have carbon steel hacksaw blades, and to snap them like he did, takes ALOT of muscles and he was problably gagged and tryied to scream. It hurts. Lol. If you snap them whilst in the lock, then you are not using the picks properly. Simple as that.

[Timmy321]

lol ok. Also using the dremel tool while making the "Rake/snake" pick why couldn't you just use a magic marker and make a *rough* patern purposly to big, and using the dremel tool cut it out then file it down to size...doing what he did takes alot of skill! Thumbs up on the video though...

[macaba]

*raspberry* Mark it on?!?! *raspberry*

You do that if you feel the need, if you dont mark it on, then you make a totally random pattern everytime, then you will have a good range of rakes. Good suggestion though, ignore my big-headed comments! hehehe...

[Timmy321]

I think I will

also I think I'm still going to use the bicycle spokes for my tension wrench...now then I'll heat it up just like pyro did, and then bend it and dunk it, the exact same way or is there something different I need to do? then after getting it bent, I then grind it down! lemme know if there is something else I need to do...

[macaba]

Sounds good to me. Maybe instead of grinding the end to get it flat, you could heat the end up until its bright orange, then give it a few whacks with a hammer, this'll flatten it nicely.

[Timmy321]

it bent nicely, I heated it till it was red, then I bent it a perfect 90° angle, then let it get a lot hotter and quickly dunked it! looks good, now then I must ask everyone elses opinion...how do I get it flat? Heat it n' beat it? OR grind it?

[PYRO1234321]

hey Timmy321,
If using spokes, i would heat, bend then grind. but be careful to keep it cool when grinding. using an allen key will give you a better metal and no need to heat and bend. When it comes to tempering various metals, its always good to test different degrees of heating (based on colour) before you cool in water. i find some metals get very brittle if heated to hot and dunked and some get very soft if not heated enough. As for your earlier post about the ease of snapping the hacksaw blade, you only see that when blades are bent 75-90 degrees in the flat direction, something you would never do when picking a lock.

Cheers

[Timmy321]

ok I will try and grind it sometime...right now I heated it and bent it and dunked it in cold water. it looks good! now I'll grind it down to size

[Timmy321]

oh and right now the whole in thing (tension wrench) is about 4 inchs long...ok how long should the bent part be? the part you actually stick in the lock to add tension with, is about 1.5 inchs what should it be?

[CitySpider]

oh and right now the whole in thing (tension wrench) is about 4 inchs long...ok how long should the bent part be? the part you actually stick in the lock to add tension with, is about 1.5 inchs what should it be?

The ones I make, the handle is usually two and a half to three inches long, the short end is usually about 3/8ths of an inch.

Of course, I favor short, stubby wrenches. Play around with it, you'll figure out what you like.

[macaba]

I'll take a (poor) picture of my tension wrench, its short, stiff, and simple!
Back in 5 mins!

[macaba]

[CitySpider]

Hey Macaba,

I'm being kind of dense today. What's the purpose of the right end of that tension wrench?

[Timmy321]

ok I'll take a picture of mine sometime and post it, so the small part doesn't need to be 1.5 inchs long?