 Hi, this is Alex with another not a picking video So I've been working on a whole bunch of these American locks because they're really good for training and they're just fun locks and I'm left-handed And so You know who he's left-handed. Who cares? Let me just give you an example of why this might be interesting This is not a proper Peterson pry bar, but you end up You can't use your index finger You end up with your your thumb on there kind of doing this and You're essentially pressing up the the torque the the Vector is kind of up and I mean even with the the better one, which I can't find at the moment It tends to fly out when I'm picking and I don't like that because then I lose my set and I have to start again I curse and all sorts of things. So I've got a new tension tensor that I've used a couple of times and it seems to work pretty well. I'm not going to pick this on video right now It's this particular lock. I have not picked up and It's kind of grungy and I don't know it's hard, but let me just show you what I did So zooming back in I'm going to try to get in real tight on this I can So this is a piece of I think eight-inch music wire Okay, that I Did a little bit of forging on and it's a whole bunch of filing And I cussed and I was sort of inspired by Kokomo's video on on making music wire tensors But one novel thing I did or I don't know if it's novel but it's novel for me Is that I cut where's my pointer? And it's going to be a little hard to see and I apologize for Camera work as always, but I cut a little shelf here on the top As well as the sides and then the center bit is sized perfectly for the American keyway And then you can see there's kind of a really wacky shape to it and you'll see why that's interesting in a moment so it's got a Zooming back out and getting rid of the magnet It's got kind of a curve here Curve there I bent this and this using heat Heating it up to red hot and and then I'm bending it And then you can see that I reheat treated it You can see the color on there And I brought it to a blue color all the way to the end which is to serve a spring temper That should be pretty tough for For the type of work it's going to be doing So for me I stick this in Okay and Completely obstructs the keyway Did I get that right? No That's better Head backwards For me I'll edit have to edit that out Or not just to show you that I'm a goofball For me That works pretty well. You can see that that is seated pretty firmly in there And you'll also notice I'm pressing it in this direction Which is tending to push the wrench back up into the keyway Rather than down or in some other direction and now I can get in here and pick and Not have to worry as much about the The wrench going flying in all directions when I'm you know one pin away from nirvana Um, maybe I will attempt to pick this But not with this pick It's also very comfortable. I put a little bit of knurling. I don't know if you can see it And I'm not a master knurler But there's the dog Excuse the noise Just used a little triangle file and just cut some marks Perpendicular here and then a couple of diagonals just to give it a little bit more grip right there And uh, so Let's see. Maybe we can pick this open. I haven't ever picked this lock open, but maybe my new tensor And the support of everyone watching will The other thing is I notice that I don't have to apply I actually don't have to apply hardly any tension. Just kind of have to keep it from falling over Right, so in with the even with the petersons if I kind of really let go Um, they will often tend to I gotta listen for the clicks they will tend to want to fall out And so I end up having to apply a lot more tension than really I should Uh for particularly for for americans So this is sized for This particular american keyway. I used this one as a gauge when I was Cutting this so you may have to You know, I may have to make a few more um music wire I got at a Hoppy shop locally I like to buy stuff like this from little stores if I can Because they're they have trouble staying in business But that said you can also buy it off of amazon or ebay or Any probably any metal working supply shop You just want to make sure that what you get is steel carbon steel And the other thing I would note is that this stuff at least the the particular product that I got Was really really hard when I got it as in it ate my hacksaw blade Um cutting through it. I should have probably used the dremel, but I was in the vise and I was in a hand tool mode So when you are going to work it, I strongly recommend annealing it and you can look at my heat treating video for annealing Um a demo of that on a smaller piece of metal, but basically you heat the thing up to the um critical temperature Which is usually somewhere between a cherry red and kind of a little brighter red and that's the um, I believe the for that the temperature is um Right about when it goes non magnetic. So another good time to have a magnet on hand um The then just let it cool For this I had it on a little ceramic plate That I bought it's they called a soldering Plate or something like that But it's a refractory ceramic material It's also nice because it helps hold some of the heat when you're heating it up. So use less gas But I just left it on there and let it sit For 15 minutes or whatever until it was what they call hand cool, which hand warm rather, which means It's not going to burn you when you pick it up And then I um I worked it And uh And then hardened it And uh and uh tempered it so And then while you watch me fail to pick this lock The last little remark is when you are going to Harden the metal which is where you take it up Again past the critical temperature where it loses its magnetism or where it'll no longer stick to a magnet or attract a magnet um You want to make sure that the entire Part that you care about that you want to heat treat Is at that temperature and it's a little easier with the material this thick But with like a lock pick or something something this thin You heat this air and that end cools down right the whole thing. So I set it down on a um On that ceramic plate It's why I was using the stove in the other video because that that has the advantage of spreading the heat out better but um That would have while the wife was getting kind of grumpy about that, but um So I heated on that plate and what I do is I set the plate across a basin of water like a little bucket And uh of cool water or brine or if you're using oil, whatever um, and then Just as the whole thing is at the temperature that I want I just basically shove it in there. I just knock it off the edge into the water um, and uh It'll uh, it's you know, I have quite as much control of trying to get it to the steam to move away and but it Compared to just getting differential Heating and having some of the parts not get fully hardened. It seems to work pretty well Um, and you just leave it in there until it stops sizzling and you pop it out and do your heat treatment um And then a final tip is when you're doing the heat treatment when you're doing the the final tempering um You want to be very very gentle if you especially if you're using a Uh flame which is which I was because I needed to take this up to about What is it 400? 450 c to get it to this this blue color Um, which is holding up very nicely I'm sucking it picking this but this wrench is working awesome um And um It'll go through that temperature really fast and if it gets too far then it softens and you don't want that um, so I I use a map torch when I'm doing the bending and the The annealing and the hardening because it heats it a lot faster when I go to do the um the tempering Which is softening it actually from that full glass hard state I moved to a propane torch and just very gently warm the thing started an area that I care less about watch the Color move Right and then just start sort of moving it around And then you have to be careful as you reach these screw this as you reach the thinner parts because it's obviously there's less mass metal mass there and you And they will they will heat much faster and remember of course that there's residual heat That will continue to move through the piece um, so you just want to You know be really gentle Move the heat up until you get the right Color the color will go away as it rusts and you know you handle it But you I don't know how well the color is coming out there, but that's sort of that cobalt blue sort of color um, that's a moderate spring tension. I got it to a lighter blue here, which is even um Softened even a little bit more, so it's going to be springier Less hard, but less likely to fracture hopefully And then you can see the full range of color here if I can get the Continuing the steel you get from the factory. Um, this was a a full blue temper carbon steel Kind of like you'd see in a hacksaw blade You can see it's that color. It's that sort of a similar color to that somewhere in here, right? It still has the oxidation on it so That's kind of what you're shooting for If you take it too far It's going to be too soft at that which point You basically have to start again fully and nail it re harden it And then heat treat it again Takes a little practice, but once you get it then And that's sort of why I was doing that video before Then you can do stuff like this with a heavier gauge wire this I'm not strong enough to make a bend like that and make it clean And um, you know, you can even thin the metal down Without taking metal away by by hammering on it kind of like a blacksmith type of thing But it allows you to take the heat treatment out so you can machine it with Files and things that give you more precision Or if you have a mill or whatever you don't want to go in there on on hardened steel and then come back And bring the temper back bring the hardness back so that you can use it as a tool So very cool. You have any questions. Let me know also that book by um Tubal cane um as uh highly recommended And he gives some more sophisticated ways of doing heat treatment if you're making tools But I don't have any of the fancy Uh kit that he has So anyhow, um, so the points heat treating working with metal very fun And I think this end on this thing which I will attempt once more to get a Focus shot of But you can see the the chamfer or the the cut out on the side And also on the top And I suppose if you were right-handed Um If you were right-handed you could make sort of the mirror image of this which I guess would look kind of like that um And you'd still have the same type of Thing if you were a bottom of the keyway tension kind of person Well, I'd have to make this differently. Um, I'd have to do it like this Right and that actually works as well For me at least All right wouldn't work for probably for a right-handed person Um, I guess it it could but you probably would prefer to use your index finger But that's hard because the right hand goes anti clockwise. Anyway, that's enough of that Cool idea. Give it a go support your local hobby shops and uh harbor stores um Because they often have cool stuff that they just don't carry at home depot or blows And um, you want to keep them in business. So Anyhow, this is alex Have fun Be safe. Um, particularly when you're working with hot metal and flying shards of metal and um I always stay legal, um, but have fun. So Cheers. Thanks for watching