Would a medium hook be any more useful than the bogota entry

[Farmerfreak]

And luckily I still have a big stack of stainless steel strips I bought from McMaster Carr... are windshield wiper inserts wide enough for good hooks, or only generally used for tension wrenches?

That may depend on the windshield wiper and what kind of hook you're making. Some of them are definitely too short. If you want to get some serious picks, you will likely need to start with some higher quality metal.

[rai]

xeo....THAT CAT what did ya do to him

have you pinned a core to 909090 and without setting it in a cylinder just put in a bogota rake and looked to see if theres a sweet spot,
of course the rake is not a 909090 height thing, it depends on agility in the keyway and tends to be more of a 505050 or a 606060, but then what key is going to be reliable inserted into a 909090 keyway? that will soon develope difficulties in putting it in and removing it.

I am not a hook or deforest hater, but I think the bogota picks a fully valid in concept and in use.
you will find that they can get by spools and counter milling with light tension and much juggling of the pins.
others may know this too.

[rerun12]

xeo....THAT CAT what did ya do to him

have you pinned a core to 909090 and without setting it in a cylinder just put in a bogota rake and looked to see if theres a sweet spot,
of course the rake is not a 909090 height thing, it depends on agility in the keyway and tends to be more of a 505050 or a 606060, but then what key is going to be reliable inserted into a 909090 keyway? that will soon develope difficulties in putting it in and removing it.

I am not a hook or deforest hater, but I think the bogota picks a fully valid in concept and in use.
you will find that they can get by spools and counter milling with light tension and much juggling of the pins.
others may know this too.

i know for myself, as i own the set that subver pictured, the titanium set from serepick which are great but a little small for my hands makes it more difficult to spp with the diamond. back before i lost one of your handmade sets rai, with the larger handle, i found the diamond to be much more useful as i was able to grip the pick better with my large hands.

i would suggest to subver that he try an get his hands on a raimundo made set of bogotas. im looking to do this myself again sometime soon.

[subver]

And luckily I still have a big stack of stainless steel strips I bought from McMaster Carr... are windshield wiper inserts wide enough for good hooks, or only generally used for tension wrenches?

That may depend on the windshield wiper and what kind of hook you're making. Some of them are definitely too short. If you want to get some serious picks, you will likely need to start with some higher quality metal.

Yeah I got a bunch of wiper inserts the other day. I have a couple that are long enough for even long hooks. I might try those out.

I have 3 hooks I made out of these Stainless Steel thickness gauges - http://www.fastenal.com/web/products/details/7043165;jsessionid=BGH6RqGHHdp7w6xlLXvgnJQyvDbTBvfMVMdXGLvnh4yTgzBJcyhT!-399261850!2145413142 - I still have a big stack of them, the only problem is there is so much metal to grind away.. and I like the size of the wiper inserts as well. I've been using the hooks I made with good success, but I think I can do better... they aren't quite the shape I want.. I'm going to make my next ones with the romstar templates..

Should I not be making hooks with wiper inserts, though? I've seen a bunch of nice sets made with them, but I won't waste my time if the metal isn't good enough, and I'll just use those SS strips I have. Or maybe I can find some similar SS strips that are not as wide.. maybe as wide as the widest wiper inserts..

[rerun12]

ive found cheap (or expensive) hacksaw blades to be a good material for making just about any kind of pick when starting out. its alot of metal to grind away to shape but you dont have to worry about wasting materials since the blades are cheap as hell and youll have plenty of room to work with. i used my wiper inserts for making (attempting to make) rai style bogotas and tension wrenches. music wire is even better for wrenches,in my opinion, and can be found online for pretty cheap also. keep at it! i love your enthusiasm subver, and its great to see how quick some of the pros on here are willing to help a newbie, as theyve done for me. awesome community

[subver]

Here are the picks I've made from those stainless steel gauges


I like them and they work good, but I feel like the handles are too wide... I actually really like the smallness of raimonds picks, which is why I wanted to make them from wiper inserts... and I'd like to modify the shape of the hooks to be more like the romstar hooks..
I wish I could find good SS metal the size of wiper inserts.

Anyway, thoughts on my picks?

[edsmiley]

I agree with Xeo in this instance where the OP is probably looking at doing this as a hobby. However, if you are looking at this beyond a hobby, raking is an excellent technique to have a good grasp on, especially if you have to be in and out. I have used raking with high success on several engagements where you need fast entry with little attention drawn to you. If I am down on 1 knee SPP-ing a door, the chance someone will notice is very high. You can typically rake with less chance that someone will notice.

There is some technique required to rake successfully in a reasonable amount of time. While it does not require the experience with the "feel" that SPP does, some understanding is helpful instead of just blind, caffine-induced raking.

From a hobby perspective, yes SPP is much more interesting and more of a challenge for most people. However, on an engagement, the first tool out of my kit is a Raimundo Bogota every time and I have used it with great success in the past.

+1 for Rai's post in this thread as well. Check out this video on some interesting raking from BosnianBill:

Raking is considered to be a gimmick with respect to manipulating pin tumblers. It is just like using an electric pick gun or bump keys in my opinion. Not to sound arogant, but raking is generally considered to be a low-skill-required method. It is for quick, moderately effortless entry to low-medium security locks and has a chance to fail due to a number of elements such as the lock's bitting, security pins, countermilling, etc.

You should definitely get a short hook and learn how to single pin pick by manipulating each pin one by one. Why should you do this? Well bogota style rakes become absolutely useless on the more high security locks and if you devote all of your energy into using rakes you will be totally destroyed when you encounter a high security lock such as a Medeco/ASSA or anything with a sidebar or extra pins. Raking also doesn't work on locks with wild bittings, like a lock pinned to 909090. No matter how much raking you do you will never open the lock with a rake. Consider even a lock where the first pin closest to the plug face is a max depth cut you cannot disturb at all. You can rake all day and will never succeed. These kinds of setups require SPP and short/medium hooks.

I realize you can use the one-hump bogota entry tool as a sort of diamond pick, but a hook is much more precisely designed for SPP and gives you way more precision in what you're doing which you will need when you encounter the more difficult locks.

Learn SPP with a hook, you'll open FAR more locks.

[GWiens2001]

See, even Bosnian Bill can not rake a BEST SFIC open.

I'm gonna have to try that with a BEST padlock with a WC keyway and spools in my collection.

Gordon

[rai]

THanks ED and bosnian bill. great video..

[xeo]

Those are some sweet looking picks subver... are those your first ones? I see you took my advice and made both a flat and round tipped short hook.

[subver]

Thanks xeo! yeah those are my first. I had one more before that which was made from a hacksaw blade, then I got this Stainless Steel feeler gauge stock. And yes, I basically just filed one down nice and flat, it works good.. the rest I had these from before.. I still have a couple Peterson picks coming in the mail to try out (and maybe use as a template) 90% of the time I use that shortest hook with the black handle.
I do plan on making more.. with better handles. All my stainless steel feeler gauge stock is slightly bent so it really bugs me.. to the point of buying more from somewhere else.. but I can sort of bend each one back individually... it still irks me!
But anyway.. My next thing is designing nicer handles.. I tend to hold my picks past the handles as is.. but I made a smaller pick from a wiper insert and I didn't like that, either.. so I need to find a good shape for me.. then I'm gonna sandwich the pick between two metal handles, glue/JB weld them together and sand them down nice and smooth.. can't wait

[xeo]

Try a brass handle... like a small tube of brass that you can crimp and/or glue on... or even some small flat rectangle bars of brass from McMaster-Carr. I had one made by a member on here and it had incredible feedback and feeling, ontop of looking massively cool.

[Oldfast]

Subver, do you have a youtube channel?

[subver]

xeo > Oooh brass bars would be nice! Would they tarnish easily or is there something I could do to prevent that? I'm into e-cigs and e-cig modding as well and notice brass always tarnishes and turns into a dull brown color... is aluminum a good material for handles? I'm pretty sure Ratyoke uses aluminum.. He's where I originally got my inspiration.. love his stuff.

Oldfast > no I dont.. not yet at least! I follow wizwazzle.. don't really know other good channels to follow, are you on there? I enjoy your threads, I'd watch your videos!

[Oldfast]

I never thought I'd set up a channel either, but I did. And it turned out to really add another fun element to the hobby.
There's plenty of good channels out there. I can't even begin to name a few, as I would certainly leave alot out. Here
Click on my signature line (at the bottom of this post) if ya wanna check out mine.