Cowbite's ole' faithfuls
I've been making my own tools for about 4 years now and have used all manner of metals - $2 for 10 steak knives from Walgreens, plumbers flat snake rolls, large, flat grill spatulas etc.. but I always come back to stainless steel knives, usually butter knife style. They are tough, rigid and aready polished.
I bought my first set of "production' picks from lockpicktools.com and was really very disappointed. The non-laminated picks are completed crap. They bend and twist and by the time you have it picked, you've cut your fingers to ribbons. Fortunately, I ordered the 60 piece set which only had a few of them in it. The laminated and laminated ripple handle picks are way better but, as with all of these picks in the set, they are all so *small*. The picks I had been making all had large-ish handles and are at least 3/8 to 1/4" thick. Not to mention that the pick shafts are still bendy and twisty which don't suit me at all but might suit others tastes. I think I really had more fun with the pick case that the set came with than the set itself. I hadn't ever had a nice case before other than a few bootleg things I'd made in the past so this one was a treat .
But I digress...
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