Tool recommendations, information on your favorite automatic and/or mechanical lockpicking devices for those with less skills, or looking to make their own.
After a little research, I decided to make my first plug spinner. I found no recent posts to tag onto, so here is a slideshow if anyone is interested. The entire assembly is constructed of parts of one rat trap (namely the hammer, spring, and platform) and the cartridge retainer of a ball-point pen. I went through a little bit of a learning curve with this being my first plug spinner. I thought the handle of the plug spinner wouldn't matter, so at first I used parts of a ball point pen, but eventually found that this was very uncomfortable to do. I removed a piece of wood from the rat trap platform to use as a handle. I also drilled a larger hole in the other end of the handle to store the plug spinner with its bearing in my locksmithing kit. Hope this is helpful to someone! I would post pictures, but I wanted to keep the resolution high, and haven't figured out how to post images on this site that are hi-res and low image size . Any questions are welcome.
Link works fine for me. Cool spinner, got a video of it in action? Would be cool to see. I use the ICL spinner but I keep a Z-wrench/elastic band spinner in with each of my sets cos I'd rather not have to carry one separately all the time. Surprisingly effective when you get the technique right!
Thanks for the compliment, let me forward one back: the FASQ part of your guide is invaluable and hilarious. Being straight up, I've learned a lot since I made this little guy. This plug spinner is way too strong. Also, the arm used to prime the spring will whip back and hit my hand sometimes, this can be very uncomfortable. I took it out and verified that it still works pretty good as a plug spinner. Here's a video of the guy in action, notice how the arm hits the bed and little pieces of wood dust from the handle bounce up in the air: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKxnycaCX1g If I had a way of mounting the lock, I'd show it spinning a plug. Sorry, no vise!
Coincidental to this old topic of mine gathering attention, I have recently inquired of Gordon and given much favor to his DIY plug spinner design: http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?p=407183#p407183 I had to order the tubing, the small-town hardware store here didn't have it in supply. Hopefully it will come soon, I'll have to post an update in Gordon's original topic.
That's a cool home made plug spinner, the more designs out there the better. Thank you for taking your time and sharing with us !
PS.: Don't worry about repeat posting, I think it's totally OK to start a new one in cases like this. (I'm no mod or any kind of forum authority though.)
YouLuckyFox wrote:Thanks for the compliment, let me forward one back: the FASQ part of your guide is invaluable and hilarious. Being straight up, I've learned a lot since I made this little guy. This plug spinner is way too strong. Also, the arm used to prime the spring will whip back and hit my hand sometimes, this can be very uncomfortable. I took it out and verified that it still works pretty good as a plug spinner. Here's a video of the guy in action, notice how the arm hits the bed and little pieces of wood dust from the handle bounce up in the air: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKxnycaCX1g If I had a way of mounting the lock, I'd show it spinning a plug. Sorry, no vise!
Coincidental to this old topic of mine gathering attention, I have recently inquired of Gordon and given much favor to his DIY plug spinner design: http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?p=407183#p407183 I had to order the tubing, the small-town hardware store here didn't have it in supply. Hopefully it will come soon, I'll have to post an update in Gordon's original topic.
Haha thanks, glad you enjoyed it. That was my way of venting frustration after seeing the same questions come up over and over again when the majority of it was common sense.
Looks good! Would be cool to actually see it in action, but I get how it works so that's something. Gordon's look pretty cool, same idea only smaller. I might do a video on my pick-case friendly band-spinner-thinger some time.
Solomon wrote:Haha thanks, glad you enjoyed it. That was my way of venting frustration after seeing the same questions come up over and over again when the majority of it was common sense.
Looks good! Would be cool to actually see it in action, but I get how it works so that's something. Gordon's look pretty cool, same idea only smaller. I might do a video on my pick-case friendly band-spinner-thinger some time.
A video of your pick case friendly method would be great, hope to see it sometime . The tubing arrived Thursday, so I'll probably have the new spinners made today. I'll have to figure out a way to mount a lock so I can do a comparison video.
Alright, finished making the design according to Gordon. I am very pleased with it. Pretty straight forward in construction. I used Blue Magic QuikSteel to secure the wiper insert and spring arms into the aluminum tubing. Thanks for your help, Gordon! Good news, Solomon: here's a video of both in use on a quaint Seagal lock I got from KeyMaster:
I made sure to reset the lock at the end so you could see there were indeed pins in the lock.
. Any questions are welcome.
. Sorry for the repeat post!
Thanks, AG. Always good to hear from you!