New photo of an old pick

While I was in the US I photographed this pick I made in 2018. It is paper micarta with orange G10 inlay. The silver pins are capped with 14k gold.

Ratyoke Custom Lock Picks

More picks from last year

Another photo I never posted...

These two are snakewood, with pink ivory (a type of wood) and silver inlay. They both went to Australia last summer.  

Snakewood with pink ivory and silver inlay

Photos from last summer

Last summer before I left the US (August 2018) I photographed a lot of my picks. After taking photos I always need to remove dust and adjust things like highlights and shadows in Photoshop and Lightroom. I mostly forgot about those photos after I came here, but recently I have been finishing them. There are still a few left to process.

Micarta with silver inlay

Carved boxwood

Olivewood

Dymondwood (a type of resin impregnated wood laminate)

Ebony

2 more picks

Both of these are paper micarta.  The white one was finished around the beginning of the year, but the black one wasn’t finished till summer.  These are two of my favorites.

Micarta
Ratyoke Custom Lock Picks

Micarta
Ratyoke Custom Lock Picks

More lock picks from summer 2018

Here are some more lock picks I made this year.  

Piquia  marfim & pernambuco

Piquia  marfim & ebony 

Sandalwood

ebony and bloodwood lock picks

These are some lock picks I finished before I came to Taiwan.  I will be making a post card with this image.

The woods I used for the handles are ebony and bloodwood.

Ebony and bloodwood
Ratyoke Custom Lock Picks

Recent Lock Picks

Here are some lock picks I finished recently.  I have made a lot more than the ones I have been posting in this blog, but I usually don't take nice photos unless I really like them. 

Selling custom lock picks has been going really well since I started promoting them more in October.  It's not a full time job, and I didn't expect it to be, but they have been selling better than I ever expected. 

Of these three I like the first one the most.  It is paper micarta with an inlay of some kind of knife handle spacer material.  I don't know exactly what the stuff is because I bought it about 20 years ago and didn't keep any record of what the stuff was. 

Micarta lock pick

Ebony + holly lock pick

Tambootie lock pick

Cocobolo and holly pick set from last year

I finished this set and photographed them in December, but forgot to take the pics off my camera and process them.  They are cocobolo and holly.

Cocobolo + holly lock picks

Pt, 18k, Garnet pendant

Here is a piece I recently finished. It is Platinum, 18k yellow gold, and a garnet.

The platinum parts are hand fabricated, the gold parts were modeled in ZBrush, 3d printed and cast.  The garnet was cut by John Dyer.  I bought it in Tucson in 2017. 

Some of my recent lock picks

These are some of the picks I have made recently.  I am very happy with the way the first one turned out.  That was the first time I did silver inlay.  Simple to do, but somewhat time consuming.

Ebony with silver inlay

Ebony + tagua nut

Ebony with silver inlay

ebony and holly lock picks

These are a few lock picks I have made recently using ebony and holly.  I bought some tagua nuts this week, I have never worked with them before.  I will probably try those in combination with ebony next time, but they are too small to make an entire pick out of.  

new pendant

Last week I finally finished this pendant.  I did the design in ZBrush while I was living in Korea.  A customer wanted me to make them a custom piece and chose this one out of several designs I presented.  I am glad she liked the finished piece.  I am always worried the customer won't be happy when they see the finished piece.  I am mostly happy with how it came out.  The materials are 18k yellow and white gold and a yellow sapphire.  This isn't the first piece I have done with CAD, but I think it is the first one I have done all the work on, from designing it with CAD to finishing the metal piece.

cat earrings

I was looking through this blog yesterday and today and realized there are a lot of things I never got around to posting.  Below are some cat earrings I made around the end of last year.  I had Shapeways print them in wax and my friend in the US cast them in silver and finished them.  I also had them print some in plastic and in steel as a pendant. 

USA trip

Last month I went to the USA from the 14th till the 27th.  It was the first time I had been back to the USA since I left February 29th, 2012.  I mostly spent the trip eating food I can't get in Korea, meeting friends and shopping for clothes.  I also got a new driver's license.  Mine expired over a year ago so I had to take the driving test again, which was silly.  It was good to drive again, I just wish my parents had a more fun car to drive.

I made 2 new lockpicks while I was there, which I just sold last week.  The handles are tulipwood.

I was too busy to make anything else while I was home.  Making these picks felt no different from when I used to make them.  I mean I didn't feel my skill had diminished at all.  Although with something smaller and more precise like stone setting, I'm sure I have lost some of my skill.  I don't know, it's just my guess.  

old lock picks

I just realized I forgot to post photos of some lock picks I finished not long before I went to Korea.

The handle of this first one is sterling silver with 14k gold rivets. The patina is liver of sulfur. I sold it before it was even finished to someone in Minneapolis.


This one below was the last pick I finished before going to Korea. I wanted to make something different before I left. I had been constantly making lockpicks for almost 2 years, but I was always making the same designs.

The handle is anodized aluminum. I think you have to click on the photo and look at the larger image to see the texture on the handle. The texture is done with a file.

This pick I did not sell. I have sold almost every pick I have made. I wanted to keep this one for myself.

felt things

Here are photos of the two brooches I entered in 500 Felt Objects. I figured I should put them on my blog cause they aren't likely to make it into the book.

Both of these are made from 1/4" thick industrial felt, anodized aluminum, and sterling.

I dyed the felt on this piece with fast blue anodizing dye. The aluminum is also fast blue. I did another version of this piece with a sort of brown/black piece of felt and orange aluminum, but I didn't like it and took it apart.


I dyed the felt on this piece black using Rit dye. The aluminum flowers are all slightly different shades of fast blue. I scraped the felt with a scribe to make it all fuzzy.


I didn't take many pictures while I was making these pieces because I was finishing them the day before the deadline for the book. One of the things I like about things like entering competitions and books and things is it give me a deadline for pieces I might otherwise drag out.

I really only took photos of the flowers I was carving for the black piece. I like how they turned out and I will probably make more of them for something else in the future.


I carved them primarily with burs, then used rubber wheels to smooth them. Carving the front went pretty quickly. The back side took much longer only because they were so difficult to hold on to. Next time I will have to come up with a better way to hold them than just trying to hold them in my fingers.


After anodizing, still attached to the wires used for anodizing:


Finished:


I like the look of the felt, but I don't really like working with it. It's too soft, and it doesn't have the feeling of durability that metal does. Metal will last a long long time. Materials like felt don't feel that way. Why would I want to spend much time making something that isn't going to last? But I'll probably make some more pieces involving felt and aluminum. I have some ideas, I just need to work out the details.

triangular earrings

I finally finished those triangular earrings I was talking about in a post last month. I put them in my Etsy shop the other day along with my 1 yen bracelet.




I had finished these not long after I wrote about them last month, but some how one of them got scratched, so I had to remove the anodizing to re-anodize them. After I removed the anodizing I got distracted by something else and they sat on my bench till a few days ago when I re-anodized them. I redid both of them because it is difficult to match the color if they are not anodized at the same time.

I have a couple more pairs of earrings that are almost done that I will put on Etsy later this week.

1 yen bracelet

It's been a while since I last posted. I have been working, I just haven't been in the mood to write about it.

Somehow I have managed to sprain 3 fingers and a thumb in my martial arts class. The fingers are not sprained bad and I usually don't even notice it, but my thumb hurts to grip things in a certain way. It's not preventing me from doing anything, it's just annoying.

I finished a bracelet last night. Its made of anodized Japanese 1 yen coins linked together with sterling silver. The coins are aluminum, so I am able to anodize them.


I had the idea for this in Nov 2008, but never got around to doing anything more than putting a few coins together. I was using green, but green is not the most consistent color, and when I anodized some more coins recently they didn't match the ones I did in 2008. So I decided to use red. I thought it would be more appropriate since they are Japanese coins and there is a red circle on the Japanese flag. Right now 1 yen is worth a little more than a penny, so making mistakes doesn't really cost anything.


The coins for the bracelet have holes drilled in them. But I also anodized a bunch of coins without any holes. I took those with me to Japan last year to try to get them into circulation. I put most of them in the donation boxes at shrines and temples.

finished at last

1665 pieces, cast and hand finished.
Approximately 250 hours labor.

snakewood pick

I finished this lock pick a few days ago. The handle is snakewood, I really like it. I will definitely be using more snakewood in the future.