Recent works (pick & pinning tray)

[aeporia]

Been away for a while, busy with life an’ all — and in part helping organise BSidesCanberra, which is going to feature a lock village, as well as some lock talks too, in addition to all the cyberz. *Excited*.

Anyway, figured I’d share two recent creations—

My first attempt at wooden handle scales. Pick is made from 0.6mm feeler gauge stock. Wood is Aussie Snow Gum, which is from a broken 60 year old axe handle. The wood was just too gorgeous to consider chucking. Fixer is aroldite epoxy. I’m really happy with how this first attempt turned out, and intend to make a whole bunch more, hopefully.





And a wooden pinning board, hand-milled with a Dremel from a $5 IKEA cutting board. My other half then applied some paint, helping cover up my slip-ups, and a nice coat of varnish to protect the board from oily lock-guts.











Meanwhile, she has been working on making a whole set of pick pouches, which, with her permission, I hope to picture sometime soon too!

Happy pickings. (:

[just1pick+open]

Very nice creations ! Thanks for sharing.

[GWiens2001]

Love the wood on that pick. Nicely done.

Those Lockwood padlocks of that model have a nice solid feel, with a solid "chunk" when the shackle pops open. A little surprised that there is no normal driver pin - all spool pins. That normally makes the key a little fiddly to insert or remove as the lock goes into a false set, blocking the key.

Gordon

[WestCoastPicks]

Nice work, I love wood and metal. looks so nice. I also make wood handled picks

[Malekal]

Nice Work!

[Neilau]

Picks looking really good.

Really nice wood can be found everywhere and you don't need much for a pick handle.

I've used old cedar cladding and it looks great.

Like you have done - old tool handles are a good source.

Another interesting handle material is smoked beef thigh bones that you get for dogs to chew on. Looks exactly like old ivory.

Good job on the pinning table too. Very "Rustic"

[l0ckcr4ck3r]

Really great work, love the scales.

[aeporia]

Thanks all.

@GWiens: The medium-sec padlocks are all now filled with these polished steel spools (5 of them). The high-sec padlocks (still using the standard, publicly-available LW4/5 keyways) finally fill all chambers (6 pins), but still all spools. I get what you mean about the addition of a standard… I certainly wish they did it with the ones they only fill to 5 slots. Re. the false-sets on key-insertion: I haven’t found this to be much of an issue so far (across all the current and prev. gen LWs w/ spools that I own).

@WestCoastPicks: that looks really nice too!

@Neilau: Beef thigh bones, eh? The mate who gave me the broken axe has heaps of them… but I reckon I’m gonna have to fight his German shepherd for one. :^)

Regarding materials — when he gave me the axe handle — he noted he might be able to get me some antler horns, which sound rather exotic. Horns and bones sound like they could be fairly brittle, no? Any tips for working with such stuff?

[Neilau]

"Regarding materials — when he gave me the axe handle — he noted he might be able to get me some antler horns, which sound rather exotic. Horns and bones sound like they could be fairly brittle, no? Any tips for working with such stuff?"

Antler horn and bone make very good handle slabs for knives and they would be great - very exotic - on picks. Not brittle at all.

The thigh bones I've seen have walls about 1/3 inch thick, so there is plenty of "meat" to work with. The smoked ones look like old ivory. Fresher ones like new ivory. They polish up very well. You can even soak new bone in strong tea, 'till it stains.

The only thing I would recommend is to wear a mask when working/cutting it. I think that the fine dust is NOT good for you and besides it really STINKS.

Get a couple of antlers if your friend offers them. I'm sure you'll find a use for them and you can't buy them down the corner store.

Have a go and see what you think.

[mastersmith]

VERY NICE! I love the look of wood, that is my handle of choice also. I have some deer antler at home also, and I just can't decide how to go about it (?). Keep up the beautiful creations.

[aeporia]

@Neilau: hey, thanks for the further advice. I think facial protection is very much in order both for breathing and the eyes. I’ll give the bone a crack next.

@mastersmith: cheers.

[Neilau]

One thing I forgot to mention re: the bone.

Cut it in half then you can see the best place to cut the slabs from.

Use a cutting wheel on a dremel.

I think you will like it. It polishes well and looks pretty cool.

Cheers.

[nozza36]

Beautiful pick , keep on doing what you're doing !
Here's one of a trio i'm making at the moment , this is near done , little bit more sanding , massage Bees Wax into the grain and re polish the blade , then it will look reasonably cool (i hope)