SouthOrd Lock Picks: From Raw Steel to Polished Perfection

We know.  Cheesy title, right?  But there are a number of processes involved in the production of our lock picks before they are assembled into lock pick sets.  So, with this blog post, we wanted to give you a photo- and video-packed peek at our lock picks' production, from start to finish. 

If you’ve had a look through our website, you may have noticed we have a pretty wide variety of individual lock picks and lock pick tension tools, of varying steel types and specs:  And this amounts to a lot of steel.  Our steel comes to us in various forms.  One such form is in large coils, like the coil of stainless steel used to produce the stainless steel handles of our rivetless metal-handled lock picks in the photograph below:

Coil of Stainless Steel used for our Metal Handled-Picks

We then process the steel in a number of ways, using different tooling, machining and production methods, depending upon the pick or tension tool being produced.  Below, is a photograph of a die used in the production of our Broken Key Extractors, and a photo of the remnant stainless steel left over from their production:

Broken Key Extractor Die

Remnant Material from our Broken Key Extractors

Our MAX Lock Picks, manufactured from High Yield Stainless Steel, are machined differently than our Standard and Slimline Lock Picks, which are manufactured from Full Hard Stainless Steel.  Below is a video of one of our MAX Hooks being machined:

YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

 At this point, we have produced our lock picks, but they are still unfinished.  We run them through a multi-step polishing process that deburrs the picks, rounds and smooths their edges, and cleans and polishes the picks.  In the first video below, our picks are weighed up and waiting to be run through deburring:

YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

When the picks are originally produced, you'll notice how unfinished the edges are.  But just after that first step of deburring, the edges of the picks have become rounded and smoothed already:

Unfinished Classic Rake Lock Pick, Waiting for Deburring (before)

Classic Rake Lock Pick After Deburring (after)

 After deburring, our lock picks go through fine polishing processes to refine the edges of the picks:

YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

By this point, our picks and their edges are evenly smoothed and rounded.  They just need one last step to clean and polish them to a high shine:

YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

We hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into our world of lock picks production.  We take pride in the production of our locksmith tools, and we continually strive to improve and offer you the finest in U.S.-made lock picks.  We thank you for choosing SouthOrd!

Trays of finish lock picks, polished and ready to be added to stock