I somehow missed this thread until tonight. I've gotta say, I spend a lot of time here, and it's not all that often that I see something that gets me really excited, but this did. No sooner did I finish reading this thread I was off to Home Depot to pick up a couple mousetraps.
tshock, this is a freakin' fantastic idea, and it works amazingly well. I fashioned up the little unit below and it has worked with 100% success on the locks I've tested so far. 100%!!! I've never owned a commercially produced plug spinner, but it is my understanding that they don't often give you 100% success rate. With the couple mods I made it is very comfortable to hold and use.
For any interested, I followed somewhat in the fashion of the unit made by vague. I made the tension wrench equivalent out of sweeper bristle, making the short part of the "L" shape a little longer than normal. Then I used my dremel to cut out small grooves in the sides of the short side of the "L". Then I lined up the straight portion of the spring along the short end of the wrench-like thingy and wrapped a very fine guage wire as a whipping to hold them together. After that I wrapped some teflon tape around the works and then added the heat shrink.
The other handle was made simply by drilling a small hole in the end of a piece of dowel and jamming the wire end of the spring into it. It is only friction that holds it in, but since there is no outward pressure on it, it seems to be holding fine.
Anyway, works awesome, and saves me from buying a pro spinner. Great work tshock! Thanks!
db