Finding a banding material made of spring steel had me wanting to make my own pick. With the Sparrow Medusa being one of my favourites, I thought I would use it as a template to start. The initial cut wasn't too bad. I made sure to leave lots of material to work with. I then used a grinding bit and file to start making shape of the tip. It's really starting to take shape here At this point the tip is a bit long, but it works just as great as the original. I was really wanting to make it personable to me, so I started making a top hat in inspiration of Mad Hatter Labs. At this point I was pretty happy with it. When originally starting with the banding it was .031 thick with coating, and I was able to bring it to .026 which allowed for clean movements. After letting the paint dry I have been successful in picking and raking with this design.

The biggest challanges so far with lock picking would be tensioning. I have read from someone more experienced mentioning "picking locks is 80% tension, 20% pick". While I don't have the accredited experience to validate that completely, I can say that after gaining more control over my tension, my success rate has increased. To work on the idea, I used a paperclip to mock up what I was after. I was actually pretty happy with just the paper clip until I decided to try and quinch it to make it more ridged - failing horribly after not being able to give it even heat with my butane soldering torch, making it go softer rather than harder. After loosing what actually was a decent tool to failure, I decided to make something else using a different material, and this is what I ended up with below. To fabricate it, I used steel from a wiper blade found in the trash. This particular wiper had two smaller pieces rather than a single piece, which worked out to my benefit for smaller...

With all my hype on lock picking, I've been reaching out to everyone I can think of looking for locks. My nieghbor, who suggests my hobbies are strange, had this Squire LP10 on his tow chain which he no longer possessed the key for and said it was mind if I get it off. CHALLANGE ACCEPTED It took more time lubing it up and getting unsized than it did raking it. I used some engine degreaser to clean it up and machine oil in the keyway and managed to get it open in under 5 minutes. Once off, I returned the chain and soaked the lock in CLR for about an hour, let it dry and then relubed it. While it's nothing special, it's been a fun lock to work on my SSP techniques and a great experience to be able to show my neighbor what I've been playing with. Lock Spec 50mm Solid brass body Hardened steel shackle 4 pin

I am now about a week deep into lock picking, gaining a lot of great experience and insight along the way. After finding some great material online to learn more about the techniques and tools involved, I began the process with an affordable Lock Picking Set on Amazon. Luoke Home Maintenance Emergency Open Set Included with the kit was an acrylic lock The acrylic lock is an excellent added feature to the already inexpensive kit, giving you the opportunity to study the inner workings and served further while identifying what techniques were effective and why. After playing with the acrylic lock for a while, I tried my hand at few inexpensive pad locks from various sources and determined that just about every common lock could be raked with a combination of picks and tension feathering. I started to focus and develop the skill at single pin picking and began reworking the locks pin by pin trying to identify binding pins and setting them. This has come a long way in ...