Combined pick/tension wrench

[skylerorlando]

I assume there are some difficulties that make it impractical to combine the tension wrench and pick gun in one unit. You'd think there would be more single-unit picking devices otherwise. Has anyone ever tried to do that? Are there any patents or anything I can look at?

I'm tossing some ideas around in my head but I'd like to go based off of others' attempts, failures, and successes rather than reinventing the wheel. =)

[Solomon]

I played around with the idea, it doesn't work very well. To make something like this effective it'd need some sort of guide to keep it sitting tight inside the keyway, to ensure that the needle is making proper contact with the pins and doing so from the correct angle.

This is definitely doable, you could make a guide which shrouds around the needle and attaches to the main body of the tool, so the angle of the needle doesn't change under tension. It's a cool idea, but it wouldn't be very practical... applying tension with the gun itself wouldn't afford you much control.

[skylerorlando]

Maybe the tensioner could be spring-loaded, so that you insert it with the needle at an angle, then rotate the barrel of the pick until the needle's angle of impact is aligned with the pins. The spring would provide tension, and all you would have to worry about would be lining up the needle, which would be relatively easy if the needle didn't rotate relative to the rest of the barrel.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to design a tensioner that would fit most locks in the same place, though. Thoughts there?