How to Make a Hacksaw Pick

Don protective eyewear and gloves, then bend the blade by hand and snap off a 6-inch section of it to make the pick from.

Turn on the bench grinder and sand off the saw teeth from the blade.

Draw an outline with a permanent marker on the blade section of the pick shape you wish to make from the blade. For a basic pick, draw a shape resembling a thin dental pick, several millimeters thick and angled about 45 degrees away from the midline of the blade section. Draw the pick's head at the end of a neck around 1 1/2 inches long and taper it down to between 1/8 and 1/16 inches wide; draw the pick's head at the broken end of the blade. Reserve at least 3 inches from the unbroken end as your handle.

Hold the hacksaw blade section against the front edge and face of the grinding wheel (not the outside edge) and grind out the basic shape of the pick. Quench the blade often in a glass of water as you do, especially if you notice the metal beginning to glow with heat or changing color in any way.

Grind out the curves of the pick's neck with the corner of the grinding wheel.

Lay the pick down on a flat surface and sand the entire tool (both surfaces and all edges) thoroughly with a heavy grit of sandpaper (roughly 150 to 200 grit) wrapped around a wooden block. For small or tight corners, wrap the sandpaper around a pencil or chopstick. Repeat with ever-finer grits of sandpaper, finishing with a grit of at least 1100.