This is a quick post about making your own locksmith cylinder repair and take it apart tools.
Now, you’ll need to buy circlip pliers, or just risk stabbing yourself with a small flathead screwdriver to remove the circlip on most lock cylinders. Everything else? You can improvise.
A plug follower can be made from a AAA battery, fattened if need be by some wraps of tape. 12mm dowel works quite well and is certainly cheap. There are hundreds of 3D printed designs out there, which is mostly overkill for a 50mm long tube, but, if you’ve only got a hammer… And to be fair, if you use some LEDs and transparent filament, you can make a lit one!
However, today I was made aware of a brilliantly simple and nearly free alternative!
There’s plenty of online tutorials on how to make a lock pick, so you can take a look at those, or drop into the Discord, or, you can read the previous posts in this series:
Making your own tools – Part 1, about obtaining materials
Making your own tools – Part 2, about dimple picks
Making your own tools – Part 3, about making lever lockpicks.
I have left this tip many times. If your have a drill index in your tools, you have a wide variety of sizes at your finger tips. The shank part of the bit makes an excellent follower.