Supplies for Making Glued-on Guitar Finger Picks

• Scissors or Small diagnonal clippers

  
  Use scissors to cut ping-pong balls. The scissors can be nail scissors or house scissors, if that's the method you're going to use. Scissors will also cut Alaska-brand fingerpicks, but small diagonals are easier to cut with. It's just basically two snips per each Alaska pick so scissors are fine.



• Nail Files (Emery Boards)
  

  Get emery board files that look like tongue-depressors used in doctor's officess and feel like sandpaper, preferably with a coarser and finer grain on each side to do heavy filing and more of a smoothing effect. And get several so you always have a replacement when one eventually wears out. These available at most drugstores, and even some hobby shops




• Tweezers or Small needle-nose pliers




• Pick one of these Materials:

  
  
  
  
  1. Ping-pong Balls
     

     Ping pong balls are available online or at any sporting goods store. Color of your choice. If they stand out in too much of a 'flourescent' way you can probably figure out some way to stain or color them to match your flesh or normal nail color more.

  
  
  2. Alaska Fingerpicks
     

     Alaska picks are made of an off-white plastic (shown in the first picture on the main page) are available online at many guitar outlets and music store. They have a nice shape and bevel to begin with and are thick to give a really solid connection when plucking. The color isn't ideal, but nor is it so florescent like ping pong balls that they would draw as much attention to the fingernails.

  
  
  3. Lexan Sheet Plastic .020 - .030 Thick
     

     Lexan sheet (polycarbonate plastic) can also be used, cut with scissors. It can be curved by bending the plastic multiple times gently with needle nose pliars.

  
  

  Pipetes (optional)

  
  
  
  
  

• "Gap-filling superglue" (thick cyanoacrylate glue)

  
  

  Superglue is great once you are familiar with it and what cautions to take with it. A big time saver. But keep it away from children and pets!

  
  

  Origin of Superglue:

  
  

  Originally invented as liquid suture to close wounds on the battlefield, superglue is chemically harmless when it contacts the skin. If it does bond skin, it loses it's grip on skin after several minutes, more and more until it can be peeled off.

  
  

  Gap-filling vs. "thin" superglue:

  
  

  Gap-filling (e.g. thick) cyanoAcrylate glue can be bought at most hobby stores. Because gap-filling superglue is thicker than ordinary superglue it doesn't wick into things nearly as easily or fast as the more familiar thinner superglue does. The slower spreading makes it easier to control, easier to direct to a specific location, etc... And it's easier to get off of skin.

  
  

  Thin superglue can get all over your hands before you know what hit you, but the gap filling stuff is more controllable. Gap-filling give more 'working' time before it sets. But that time is still measured usually in seconds.

  
  

  Stay away from superglue 'kicker" when using superglue on nails:

  
  

  There are spray-on 'kickers' that act as catalysts for superglues to accelerate their curing (hardening). In fact, they cause the glue to set almost instantly, but don't use kicker for putting on nails, because the accelerants are usually a solvent, and you don't want to inhale solvents more than necessary. Worse, intense heat is created when kicker (accelerant) contacts superglue. When a kicker is used, the molecular reaction can happen so quickly to set the glue that it can get hot enough to induce a 2nd degree burn (a blister), which is very painful, especially on the fingernail. And besides all of that, when glue is cured too fast with such catalysts the result is that the glue is more brittle.
  
  

  Use long nozzles or pipetes for easier application, and to extend glue life:

  
  

  Try to find super glue with a good long narrow tip that is conical and comes to a smallish point, so you can get nearly pinpoint accuracy when you apply it, and which is long and narrow enough that you can cut the tip a few times if it gets clogged. Some hobby stores sell extra tips for the glue, but you can also use a pipete, and cut it to a workable size and trim it back when it gets clogged, in the same way.




Optional Electric Rotary Tool

 (e.g. Nail drill, Dremel, ... For shaping & grinding)




Optional rotary tool (not required!)



Emery boards and nail clippers are sufficient to do the complete job of trimming and shaping the fingerpicks. But a rotary tool is quicker for every kind of nail shaping, grinding and surfacing, including making guitar fingernails. A rotary tool is particularly useful for grinding down the 'ridge' of the lower edge of the lexan nail to make the lexan piece ramp down onto the nail seamlessly rather than drop down like a "cliff" (particularly lexan which at .020" -.030" thick stands up noticably off the nail unless filed down a bit at the lower edge).



It is also possible that you would want to customize the thickness of the lexan sheet, by filing down some of the thickness by rubbing the flat surface against sandpaper, or by an electric grinder, since .020" thick, while it is adequate, is a on the thin side, but the next-larger commercially available size, .030" is definitely on the thick side. Such filing/sanding can be done with an emery board, but it is a little more work to get the right angle and, definitely more work to use the emery board to seamlessly thin lexan after it's glued down than a rotary tool.

And did we mention 'optional'?

You don't need to be in a rush to buy one of these tools; you don't need it. If you want to get one, you can find it under such terms as "nail drill", "manicure drill". Even a Dremel™ tool will do the trick. Nail drills can be gotten at a relatively modest price if you get one designed for light personal/occasional use. Full featured professional nail drills that manicurists use can cost hundreds of dollars. Those are the Porshes of nail working equipment. You don't need that, but beware that the *very* cheapest battery operated ones don't get good reviews. (For example in the $10-$15 range). One would have to imagine the cheapest models skimp on quality... underpowered, fragile, badly designed, cheap materials, etc... So get the right compromise between power, ease-of-use and budget.