Josh66 - Homebrews

[Josh66]

Thanks Oldfast!

[the shepherd]

wow!! they're some of the niceist picks ive seen to date, lovely craftsmanship. Do u have any for sale/trade? ?

[Josh66]

No spares at the moment... There is a sort of waiting list developing, lol. I can put you on it if you like - I think there are 3 or 4 people ahead of you right now (I'd have to check my notes to be sure - I may be slow in delivering, but I haven't forgotten).

The more I make the better they get - I guess that's natural.

I can't make these fast enough to keep up with demand, so it may be a while.

[Oldfast]

I myself am content to just marvel at them! lol. I hope you continue to take pictures & share em' Josh.
Welcome to the forum Shepherd. Josh's homebrew thread is certainly a nice jaw-dropper to start with

[Josh66]

No fancy handles for these, I made these recently for my small pocket kit. I really like them so far - nice and compact. I made them from .040" titanium, and thinned the ends out to about .020". The thick part in the middle makes them nice and stiff.













I haven't really had time to make picks with handles lately, so I figured I would finally polish these up since my double ended picks are becoming my most used (I pretty much always have them with me). The full pocket set is two more picks, and some wrenches.

They are surprisingly comfortable for not having any sort of handle.

[Alaphablue]

Titanium sweet mother of god the price of that stuff for me anyway .you lucky sombitch they are some killer designs your going to make every body jealous .

[Josh66]

Every now and then I can find pick sized scraps of titanium at work.

Last time I checked, .040" 6AL-4V titanium (what I usually use) was about $150 per square foot. So assuming you could get 50 picks per square foot, the material costs wouldn't actually be too bad. Early today I was trying to figure out if it would be cost effective for me to make a batch of these - I think it would be, just gotta find a good source for titanium now, lol. I'll have to find out where we buy it from at work...

edit
If I make the blanks 5 1/4" x 3/8", I can get 72 on a 12x12" square. If I spent some money on a few more tools, I think I could get production time down enough to not be working for free, lol.

[Josh66]

A couple new ones from today - I don't really consider them 100% yet, bet they are certainly usable. (The bottom one is 100% - I just need to get it polished better.)



Same as before - .040 Ti, thinned down to .020 on the pick shafts.

I have a ton of Ti blanks ... I might be making a lot of these soon... The ones I have now are already taken, but when I have more I'll post 'em.

Oh - just because there isn't really any sort of scale there, the handle is 3/8" wide, and the pick shaft is .100" at the widest part.

[piotr]

Sleek.

[Josh66]

Some better pics of the new picks (and material soon to be picks):


A Sparrows pick and a Peterson pick for size comparison. (Thanks for the snow man, locks & HPC cases, Ed - I'll be getting something together for you soon.)


Titanium blanks, and a couple picks. I have more Ti that I have to cut up too...


My pocket set. (You may recognize one of the rakes from my aluminum handle guide.)

[thehunter]

Very nice picks !!!!!

[jruther2]

Great looking picks there Josh!

[uklockpicker]

wow very very nice indeed

[Josh66]

So, all the talk about Bogatas lately ... I wanted to try making one.

I had a couple scraps of Ti that were too small for a regular pick, so I figured they might work for this. Well, one of them was too small for anything but a tension wrench...



Pretty comfortable in the hand:

(left handed so I could hold my phone)




I made this pretty quick - I just bead blasted it instead of polishing it. Seems to be working alright. I haven't opened anything hard with it yet, but it opens Master No, 1 & 3's, and cheap deadbolts pretty much instantly.

I'll make a proper set soon.

[Alaphablue]

They look great I like the blasted finish over the polished look it resemble the patina on d2 tool steel