Josh66 - Homebrews

[Josh66]

Here are the latest.



Some keys for scale:


One of these is for elbowmacaroni - I'll let him pick which as soon as he gets on here.


Here are some older ones:

[10ringo10]

nice work josh stunning in fact elbows a lucky man,i know which one id choose.. i love the photo work also the second pic down would not be out of place in a top magazine.

[LocksmithArmy]

woah....

woah...

... woah

[Josh66]

HAHA - Thanks guys!


The handles are aluminum - riveted on. Some of the picks are titanium, some are made from band saw blades. I don't know what it is about band saw blade, but I love that stuff - FAR superior to hack saw blade, and I even prefer it to titanium.

The feedback is excellent on these. I don't have a whole lot to compare them to though - the only commercially manufactured picks I have are Sparrows, which I like - but no mass produced pick can even approach a good hand made pick, IMO.

[muddassarusa]

I love it fantastic job but where you get aluminum handle ?

[Oldfast]

Brilliant work Josh. Just brilliant, really. I found myself looking over these at least a 1/2 dozen times-

First, just for the enjoyment of it, then to tryn' find the words to describe them. lol

Ringo said it.... "STUNNING"...... yeah.

[mdc5150]

I love the look. It is hard to put them in words. Like if James Bond had lock picks that he didn't have to hide those would be it. Very elegant looking. Picks that the most interesting man in the world would use. "I don't always use lock picks, but when I do...."

[Josh66]

I thought I typed a reply to this already... Too many tabs open maybe, lol.

but where you get aluminum handle ?

I'm an aircraft mechanic, so I work with aluminum all day. The amount of aluminum you would need for these, I can find in the scrap bin pretty much any time I want - sometimes very large pieces. If it has no Lot Number visible on it (like if somebody wiped it off), it is no longer traceable, so it is no longer usable on the aircraft. You have to know where everything came from and what it was used on in case there is ever a problem with the material - that way they can figure out which aircraft might be affected.
[EDIT - So, because of that, you have two options - fly around on a jet that you have no idea what it is made out of, or throw away everything that has had it's Lot & Batch numbers removed. They're just printed on the sheets in ink - the same stuff we use to clean everything else takes that ink right off - so a lot of material ends up as scrap.]


Thanks again everyone!

[funkysod]

Looks really good!

[nozza36]

Bloody hell , that puts my homebrew to shame , i'm going to have to up my game ! nozza36 has gone green with envy.

[andrex66it]

Oh my god.... I bet an alien lockpicker would have a set of your picks... totally awesome job,man!
'grats!

[piotr]

Very nice -- sleek and sophisticated.

[jfw]

Good work, keep it up!

[Josh66]

I made a new one the other day (yesterday, actually)...

I didn't have a pick of this style, but mostly I wanted to try out a new handle shape. This is by far my best pick to date - and no, it is not for sale, lol! (Yet. I may change my mind one of these days...)
I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to make more picks for trade (I can make about one a month unless it's really slow at work) - there are a few people that have expressed interest - I haven't forgotten about you!
It really only takes about 8-10 hours, start to finish, to make one of these (the bulk of that time is shaping the handles) - but I'm supposed to be doing other things during that time. So, I have to either have a day where I don't have to do anything at all, or spread the project out over a few weeks, doing a little here and there.



I tend to hold my locks with the pins at the bottom, so I prefer holding it this way:


Just to get a better look at the handle:


The locks I've been picking lately have keyways too restrictive for this to work in comfortably, but it is nice in non-paracentric keyways.

[Oldfast]

Beautiful!!