I write this mainly for newbies out there, so I hope that no one thinks my examples are stupid (hey--don't make fun of my noooob tooools!
).
I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago after I, ahem, 'modified' my SouthOrds as you'll see below, but after I did those I just kept going and going and...came up with some interesting stuff, actually. Most importantly, I had a very important learning experience that I wanted to share, mainly for newcomers. The most important skills you can possibly master in this hobby (and a few others, too, I imagine) are the abilities to improvise and be creative when trying to accomplish things and solve problems. I have always found that the most important personal trait for mastering a specific field is almost always psychological instead of the actual skills, techniques, tactics, whatever, so I guess you could say that mindset is most important.
From what I have learned since joining this forum, I honestly have to say that the need to be creative and the ability to improvise seem to do more for our members, myself included, than almost anything else. Our tools are often homemade, usually a modified version of a product (i.e. standard pick design copies like the basic hook, diamond, etc.), or many times they are something entirely new that a member invented (Raimundo's Bogotas--which are AWESOME, I might add--then someone came up with hobby/exacto knives for handles, Bembel's BEAUTIFUL picks and nifty plug spinner), but either way creativity is what will serve you best under any conditions. You can have two people with identical picking skills, but if one of them can improvise a tool that will open a lock in 5 seconds that would normally take 5 minutes to open, well, you just can't beat that. There are tools that will pick/bypass very high security locks in seconds, but you can't buy them because they don't exist yet because no one has INVENTED them yet, or, possibly, Romstar just finished making one of them and has got it hidden in his basement
Anyway, I just wanted to share with any newbies who might read this what I came up with a couple of weeks ago to show you what can be done with no power tools, few hand tools, and just some SouthOrds, some creativity, and the desire to take an existing tool and make it better:
Here, my coolest creation yet--SouthOrd hooks (and a diamond on the left) converted to Falle-style deep curve hooks!
A close-up of one:
A disclaimer: I am NOT claiming that these are as good as Falle picks, dremeled/ground/filed Falle copies, or whatever. This is what you do if you're a newbie, you have no power tools and hacksaw blades, but you do have your newbie PXS-14 or, in this case, C1510 slimline set and you want to try out the deep curve pick design now. These are not as good as Falles, or even some decent copies, but they ARE MUCH BETTER than a standard southord hook, in my humble opinion. I found these made my life MUCH easier, and I could pick the locks I had much faster and with greater ease than I could with the regular old hooks. The shape, the basic design, is what makes the Falle deep-curve hooks so good, and that is what I got by taking some simple hooks and bending them until they looked the way I wanted them to. How did I bend them
? Well, I had pliers and a hammer, and tried both, but I found that the best way was to actually stick them into the keyhole of a lock and then start giving them LITTLE bends from one end to the other, thereby ending up with an overall curve shape.
Stick pick in lock. Pull hard to bend. Stop. Move up/down a little. Repeat. Admire craftmanship of your homemade deep-curve picks
This is NOT meant to substitute for a dremel, vice, files, bench grinder, etc. If you have anything along those lines that I obviously didn't have at the time, USE IT. This is meant to be an example of what you can do if you're creative, and how to get something a little better than the standard hook if you've only got some southords, by emulating a design known to be effective and copying the shape of this outstanding pick.
Here's the tools that I used, and these are basically all the tools I owned at the time, and I was broke, so these really were my ONLY choices (please keep that in mind before making any judgements about what I came up with):
(Notice the duck tape on the tips of the pliers and leatherman to keep from scratching the picks)
and my lansky knife sharpening kit that I used to polish them (I have a thread on how to do this--search!)
The next thing I came up with was a double-ended tension wrench--take your long southord wrench, heat it up if you can, and then bend it about forcefully
--pliers are what I used, but I suppose you might be able to use pliers and your hands, or just your hands if you've got the gorilla-like grip to do it . By the way, if you think you can't do tension wrenches because you don't have a propane torch, guess what, neither did I--do you have a propane stove instead of electric? Well, guess what, propane burns at the same temperature whether it's coming out of a torch or a stove, and a gas stove WILL get that tension wrench to glow orange hot in a few seconds, so use that if you can (not responsible for 3rd degree burns, angry parents, singed eyebrows, exploding ovens/kitchens/houses, etc. 
)
Lastly, a featherweight tension wrench:
Take a particular southord pick that you find quite useless (shouldn't be hard
), nip the tip with some wire cutters, bend it around a bit, and then put a little cant on it so you can get it into the lock without the handle getting in the way. I made this specifically for those TINY TINY padlocks you see on luggage and in vending machines; there's a thread around here somewhere that I got the idea from. Here's another picture of it:
WHEW!! I hope I didn't irritate anyone with this monstrosity of a post! I really just hoped that this would help put some newbies on the right track, and give them some ideas and inspiration for what they can do with the limited tools and materials that they may have at hand.
Oh, and BTW, the reason I had the minerals to do this to my picks was because I knew that I had some Bogota rakes and Peterson picks coming in the mail in the next few days
--hope that doesn't deter anyone from trying something new!
