Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:01 pm
Advanage of high carbon steel
This post is a work in progress....... additions and adjustment to come
A lot of people are doing just fine with their picks made out of any metal they find. Thats great
However some pickmakers however insist on steel with a high carbon content. You will often hear of people using hacksaw blades or the metal plumbers snake to make lockpicks. This metal used to be fairly high carbon steel.
These days a lot of the hacksaw blades and plumber snake is made from lower or very low carbon steel.
Water can exist in 3 states ice, liquid and steam.
Steel like wise can have a number of states. As steel is heated diferent types of crystals of carbon are formed each with their own properties.
Assume that you have a piece of high carbon steel wire. In the begining it may be very flexable can be easily bent.
Heat that piece of wire very hot and the carbon crystals in the steel change their molecular structure and you can end up with a piece of wire that was once very flexable that is now very stiff.
Unfortuately while the wire has become very hard it is also very brittle and will break easily.
That hard and brittle piece of wire can be reheated and have some of the brittleness reduced with the strength maintained.
The property of the steel can be adjusted by heating and reheating the steel.
With the proper carbon content in a piece of steel one can make lockpicks that have much thinner shanks (the part between the handle and business end of the pick) Larger shanks can interfer with adjacent pins and make picking the lock a lot harder.
With the ideal steel I can grind a lockpick with a very thin shank. After heat treating the pick the thinner shank will be strong enough not to bend or break.
Thinning out the shank on inferior quality steel would result in a shank to weak that may bend or break.
I grabbed a jpg of picks made with high quality steel. You can see that the shanks are a lot thinner than the usual shanks.
A lot of people are doing just fine with their picks made out of any metal they find. Thats great
However some pickmakers however insist on steel with a high carbon content. You will often hear of people using hacksaw blades or the metal plumbers snake to make lockpicks. This metal used to be fairly high carbon steel.
These days a lot of the hacksaw blades and plumber snake is made from lower or very low carbon steel.
Water can exist in 3 states ice, liquid and steam.
Steel like wise can have a number of states. As steel is heated diferent types of crystals of carbon are formed each with their own properties.
Assume that you have a piece of high carbon steel wire. In the begining it may be very flexable can be easily bent.
Heat that piece of wire very hot and the carbon crystals in the steel change their molecular structure and you can end up with a piece of wire that was once very flexable that is now very stiff.
Unfortuately while the wire has become very hard it is also very brittle and will break easily.
That hard and brittle piece of wire can be reheated and have some of the brittleness reduced with the strength maintained.
The property of the steel can be adjusted by heating and reheating the steel.
With the proper carbon content in a piece of steel one can make lockpicks that have much thinner shanks (the part between the handle and business end of the pick) Larger shanks can interfer with adjacent pins and make picking the lock a lot harder.
With the ideal steel I can grind a lockpick with a very thin shank. After heat treating the pick the thinner shank will be strong enough not to bend or break.
Thinning out the shank on inferior quality steel would result in a shank to weak that may bend or break.
I grabbed a jpg of picks made with high quality steel. You can see that the shanks are a lot thinner than the usual shanks.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.