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Here are a few snappers i made , would like to have a longer spoke to work with , but you make do with what you got guys !

heres my snapper

I made a few from stainless steel welding rod I found in the industrial park they worked good .

Are bike spokes better than coat hanger wire when making snapper picks.

Bike spokes are better than coat hanger for sure due to the temper/springiness of the metal. I have made some with the spokes and some with 1.5 mm antenna stock. Both have worked great but, the antenna stock delivers more force to the pins undoubtedly. I have devised a simple way to check how much force the snappers deliver. Hang an unbent bicycle spoke 1 inch off the edge of your bench (mark it and be consistent). Barely lift the tip of the spoke with the tip of the snapper then snap your snapper. You find that different designs will propel the spoke to different heights. My antenna stock with 1/2 inch one turn spring throws it 3 feet in the air, while my no spring bike spoke unit can only throw it about 8 inches, and my 1/4 inch one turn spring bicycle spoke unit is somewhere in the middle.I have had such good success with these on locks that I'm taking my HPC snap gun out of my tool kit. Homebrew=better. Nozza thanks for the pics and measurements. After screwing around with these for a few weeks now I have come to roughly the same size unit that you have. I have found that snappers built with an angled needle (most that I have seen have been between 45 and 20 degrees) do not deliver the force to the pins that a straight unit does. Some folks over on the on lp101 that were testing some of Raimundo's early designs drew the same conclusions. Try this test on your angled units and let me know what you find. If you fall back on physics class from school a concurrent force diagram of the forces applied during a snap would seem to support this conclusion.

OOHHH, That's Pretty!!! Could have used that today, but had to settle for for the Makita and a HSS drill bit.

A test that I have been useing was done with a US 25cent piece, a quarter, I put the quarter in my hand flat and center the snapper needle under it with just the tip sticking out. do it three times and it will get different results but take the best one. the difference in the result could be the trigger let off, the amount you pressed it down, the centering of the needle under the quarter, or something else.

how hard it strikes is an interesting issue, when I was playing with bump keys for the first time several years ago, one of the improvised bump hammers I used was the handle of a stainless butter knife, this struck quite hard but never opened a lock, later with a light plastic bump hammer I had very good success.
I don't use bump keys any more at all, but there was a time on the internet forums when they were much talked about.

the hardness of pin springs could be one issue, if the springs are weak and the strike is hard, this could throw the pins very fast and have them rebound very fast,

there are also things you can do like make a tiny tip on the needle to feel that last pin depth, so you don't waste the strike on some part of a tailpiece or boltworks

Rai I agree various levels of strike strength are compatible with various locks. The hardest strike will not always be the most effective, so I always carry a couple. I think that the bike spokes and other stainless steel stocks are much more springy than coat hangers any day. Rai, without rethinking materials and design the home brew snapper would not have made it back to the spotlight and my toolbox. Thanks for the inspiration to work on theses guys again. You continue to be an innovator in this field.

PS if you haven't tried this design it is worth an hour in the shop to bust one out.



First two are antenna stock and the last is the bike spoke. You will notice my ability to form the spring got much better over time.

I have been around the picking world for over 10 years . I have collected a lot of links on various sites and thought I would pass on this one from lockpicking101.com

If you are interested in other snapper pick designs check out this link to http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=898&start=30

If you go to http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=898 you can follow the thread from the begining.

Several of the users back then posted excellent videos of the devices being used. Unfortunately the links are long dead.

A lot of great material that people went to a lot of effort to create has been lost over the years . When you see something good be sure to copy it for your own archives but respect copyright and be carefull when reposting it.

I looked through that, first time probably since I read it back in the day and posted there. some of the things I thought were my recent modifications were there, bike spokes, a tiny tip, although the one shown is oddly on the opposite side that what is needed for feeling how deep to place the needle, perhaps it was on the bottom only for taking the needle out and turning it over to go in and finish a few pins.

One thing I have found with the small tip is that sometimes you can simply finsh the job with a bit of spp with that tip.

thanks for looking that link up.

Adding a replaceable needle


A user over at the german site Koksa posted a mod to add a changable needle.

Any idea what the little addition is called?

http://wiki.koksa.org/Snap-Pick-Gun

Abroxis , the addition looks like 2 bits of brass drilled and tapped and used basically as a clamping extension !

Post a link? OK abroxis, I see the link

searched koksa found 4 raimundo refs 3 bogota refs no snapper refs, suche is the word for search, I don't know what the term for snapper is,
didn't see the bilder thats always a good lookup but that on SSdev

found the snappers, how do they use that design upside down like that? maybe thats on german youtube.

I dont' think that is a device for replacing the needle, its probably a device for setting the depth to use the snapper without putting it in too deep, and it gives me an idea for making a simpler device, to do that same thing.

the device must be adjustable, a piece of flat spring thin and wide with two holes in it, can be placed on the needle arm, put the device on by pushing the needle arm through both holes so that the flat steel bends and produces a friction lock on where this thing sits, then put the needle arm into the trap with the bent part of the flat steel spring arched over the part of the trap so that while the needle is inside the trap, the arched flat steel piece is outside, over that part of the trap, you could adjust this thing along a small part of the needle and it would be used to index the depth against the face of the lock. think of ) with a straight line running through both top and bottom the enclosed space would have the curve over the outer part of the trap. it could possibly even be easily removable if the hole furthest from the face of the lock was elongated and one end had a slot out to the lower edge of the spring that could pass the wire through, you could put it on and take it off quickly.