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Take a sheet of steel, coat it with acid resistant material, and then remove the material where you want the piece to be cut. Dunked in acid, the acid will eat away the metal with great acuracy leaving the steel machined the way you want it.

This technique is the technique used to produce some of the metal lockpick business cards.

I am considering doing a run of precut lockpick blanks. Setup cost is expensive but after that the cost per unit is cheap. I was going to do a run of picks but wanted to try this first.

Machinists use a paint like material called layout dye. When they have to machine very intricate shapes they can trace the shape with a sharp pointed scribe leaving the silver metal showing through the paint.

The tangs will be coated in layout dye and it will be easy to scribe the shape of the pick tip. For beginers a template will be available .....just trace the tip shape that you want in the blue layout dye and grind and file away.

The pick blanks will be produced from highquality carbon steel of a good thickness for most lockpicks. The blanks will then be tumbled in a drum with grit and oil to smooth out the edges and then washed free of oil and grit.

Question do you think these blanks, priced at below $2.00 a piece would be a help or totally worthless ???

It's not a bad idea, alot of new pickers complain of cashflow!! You may sell alot of these to the new people, and some probably to the old members.

I think you would be able to sell a lot of them. The thickness is already correct, just cut your favorite tip onto the blank.

would it be cheaper to have them laser cut

The cheapest way to have them cut will depend somewhat on what volume gets produced.

It might be an interesting exercise to send request for quote to a number of places and see what kind of answers I get.

One hurdle is the cost of setup .... Photochemical might cost $100 to $200 .... If I could afford to have custom dies cut and have them stamped
it could cost $1000s. Mind you the cost per piece might come down to .25 each vs $1.00

sounds like a good idea . they would be handy to have .

??

Yeah thats a good idea!
I'd buy some.

I like the idea, it allows people, even expierienced pick makers, to try out new handle ideas withoug wasting too much time on the pick itself...

how awful is it to have beautiful picks then yiou mess up the handle and scrap the whole thing... but if you only have a few cents to a dollar and little time invested in the pick you will try riskier and new ideas for handles. maybe even some nice screw on wood handles or somthing like that

i like the idea

I can't wait to see how this turns out. Good luck.

I do not want to sound negative, but I do not think the average person would have any problem in fabrication a handle, but they probably will in shaping the business end of the pick. Anyone who has hacked a narrow key way such as a Yale Y2, knows that a typical off the shelf profile pick is not going to do the job, A beginner does not know this, nor do they know that the typical 'off the shelf' pick blade is far too long. So rather than 'perfect' handles I would like to see picks with 'perfect ' tip profiles, that can do the job. Also I would like to see a deviation from the philosophy that you need dozens of picks. Five picks that will do the job, are far better than two dozen that cannot. From an engineering point of view most picks I see are crap and can only slow the development of a beginners skill. Handles are meant for hands and that includes the fingers. Any finger out there, on the end of a wobbly, sharp , over long blade, is the mark of a bad pick design.

In effect I am suggesting, 'oh so bloody humbly', that everyone has been doing things wrong and now is the time , to make amends and correct things, for the sake of future lock pickers. Hey ...... you have to admit that is a bold statement from someone who had never even thought of locks a month ago !. Of course there is always a terribly slim possibility that I am wrong .... but the probability is that I am right, and I have the balls to say so !.

So what profiles would I subscribe too ?. Based on my limited experience, it would have to be a medium sized half diamond for a starter. For the 00500 locks we have to use a hook whether we like it or not, but getting it under the '5' cut and up to a '0' cut may need more than one profile hook, so I have two. As for the 1001 rake profiles, well I just dismiss them all and say than a Bogota, or nice long uniform snake , will perform as well and better than the rest put together. Dear me, that only amounts to four picks, but we can double that because, we have large key ways and 'normal' ones. In the case of the typical Yale key way, it is narrow and has sharp bends and that means the pick has to be narrow and of a depth that can negotiate those bends, when picking. This tends to leave the pick blade extremely thin and a pick made for this task is best reserved for it.

In any field, change is inevitable, the trick is to roll with it. There are things that are wrong out there, and with time they will get corrected ... or one day some smart ass such as myself will come along and question everything. If nothing else it should boost the traffic on the site, I was beginning to fall asleep !.

You are not suggesting anything new here. About every time I have seen a beginner ask what they should buy, they are told a small, well made pick set will last for years. I have been gone for a bit, but I don't remember anyone tellin a newbie to buy a 30 piece set.

I do think the idea of selling some blanks with unmade tips for cheap is a great idea. I would love to have a stack of these to shape if I need something special for a one-off job, or a quick replacement if I break a main pick. If you get the system set up, I will order some.

yes gr8 idea ill have a couple see this through best of luck with this

Based on a few preliminary quotes ...

With a production run of 5000 the costs drops to 47 cents a piece

At lower runs the cost per unit climbs to over $10.00 a piece.

For the idea to fly it will require fronting over $2000.00 which is more than I feel like "investing"