Dual torque tool

[eric343]

I've found this to work extremely well sometimes and not at all other times.
Comments? (apart from jibes at the cr*p quality of my cameraphone)

[digital_blue]

That's a pretty cool idea. It's never even occurred to me. Seems as though it might be a bit awkward, but your grip probably minimizes that.

Do you find it takes up too much keyway room though? Most of the double-pronged tensioners I've used involve horizontal blades, so this method seems as though it would eat up the keyway pretty quick not leaving room for the pick.

Just my thoughts though. If it's working at all for you, that's pretty cool.

db

[pradselost]

By looking at it, my first impression is that it would get in the way or obstruct access to the pins in a pin tumbler mechanism, right? Digital_blue does have a good point as well about lack of space inside the keyway also.

I guess it's a solid enough idea but personally I guess I dont' understand the concept behind it. The purpose of a torsion wrench is to turn the plug...are the two wrenches meant to turn it...more? Or....am I missing something? I don't mean to come across as critical, just very perplexed as to what it's supposed to do that one wrench doesn't.

[horsefeathers]

As has been said, i am guessing that using the two does restrict the keyway more. Personally I like as mush room as possible to manipulate the picks.

What about if the lock is fixed to a a door. Your idea is good while holding lock in the hand, sat watching tv for example, but what about at a customers front door? I imagine the door handle itself getting int the way would hinder the use of two wrenches.

[illusion]

Hmm... gives better control over torque, one you get your head around coordinating both wrenches together. I would guess that were I inclined to use tension from both sides of the plug, and missing my Falle Safe tensioners, then I'd likely use your idea Eric.

You could do it on a customer's door, but you would have to carry wrenches bent, as to not touch the door frame. Eric's idea was mostly for a hobbiest perspective however.

Nice idea, I like it.

[Shrub]

Your camera phone is cr.... oh right

[Shrub]

" Eric mutters to himself how he regrets loosing his Falle adjustable tension wrenches" lol

[eric343]

This trick was shown me by a fellow student here, so I can't be the first...

" Eric mutters to himself how he regrets loosing his Falle adjustable tension wrenches" lol

When it works, I've found this to be more effective. In the "7 pin lock pops as soon as I insert a rake" domain of freakish effectiveness.

Keyway obstruction, awkwardness are all legitimate concerns. But there's usually enough room to get a pick between the tools...

[Shrub]

I was only playin wit ya, good idea, i tried it a bit ago but decided i needed a 3rd arm whilst on a door but great idea.

[pinsetter]

I tried something similar:

I took a wiper insert, and with some heat I bent it double. Basically I just folded it in half and hammered it flat while it was hot. After that I bent the two sides outward to an angle between 45 and 90 degrees, probably around 60 or 70 degrees. After getting all the angles bent I heat treated the steel to harden it back up, then put a flex twist on both sides after I had tempered it.
I had to do a little grinding on the part that sticks in the keyway to get a good fit, but it was easy to accomplish.
Anyway, you end up with a tension wrench that is shaped like a Y (if the handles were at 90 degrees it would be a T handle). The reason for leaving it a Y is to keep it away from door facings and to get into those KIK doorsets that have the plug recessed into the knob.
This wrench works especially well on locks with security pins that require manual negative plug rotation. You can apply the negative rotation while still controlling the positive force on the tool. It is much more controlled than trying to "bounce" a tension wrench to press the pins through. It works good for me, and with 1 tool with 2 handles you actually have enough hands to work with it.

[raimundo]

I have made varients on what pinsetter is saying, that is a lot like 3rics idea but made with opposite ends of the same piece of metal. this will give a varient of torque applied from each end, that is , one end may actually be applying more torque than the the other, but the problem is to avoid wasted, grounded, bound torque biting into the cylinder wall, and the good part is that when you bounce the tension, the heaviest part may reduce while the lighter part will apply steady light tension. its a good idea.

[illusion]

I made a dual wrench using wiper blade insert a while ago. I guess no better time to ost a photo.



Closed:



The part keeping it closed is an old spacing disc from an Abus Plus lock.

Hope you like!

[eric343]

Bearing in mind that the following is entirely theoretical, and hasn't been run by the physics department:

I have made varients on what pinsetter is saying, that is a lot like 3rics idea but made with opposite ends of the same piece of metal.

As far as I can tell, the critical part of my original post is *not* that it contacts the plug at two points!

Conventional designs, including the Falle turning tools, have the torque applied at the end of a lever arm some distance from the plug. DUH. Not so obvious is that this results in both torque (DUH) and horizontal force (WHA?) on the cylinder. Think about it -- if the cylinder was kept from turning but not fixed in place (so it could still move in two dimensions, again, without twisting) it would move away from your finger using a normal torque tool.
With the "dual torque tool" idea, there is almost no horizontal force. If I were to keep it from turning but still allow it to move horizontally, it would go nowhere. I suspect that this results in greatly reduced binding of the plug against the shell and a correspondingly more efficient conversion of torque into binding forces on the pins.

Still confused?

OK, think of it this way. Imagine a decently sized (and fairly heavy) model car, with a pencil penetrating all the way through the side of the car. (Nasty accident, that.) Now drop that car on a turntable, like a DJ or your grandpa uses to play music. If you apply torque by putting just your thumb against one end of the pencil, the car and turntable will turn. But if you use your other hand to stop the turntable from turning, applying that exact same force will cause the car to drive right off the turntable.

If we instead *twist* the car, by using thumb and fingers to apply torque at both ends of the pencil, the turntable will still turn. If we stop the turntable, on the other hand, the car will go nowhere.

OK, so why do we care?
Well, in the first case, applying torque at one end causes the turntable to turn, true -- but it will also cause the car to roll right off the turntable, just as it does when the turntable can't turn. (don't believe me? Try it. You may need to weigh the car down in order to get enough friction.)

Same thing happens in a lock. There's horizontal force (the same kind that sent the car off the turntable) pushing the plug against the cylinder wall. The result is that only some fraction of the force you apply to the torque tool is actually translated into binding force on the pins, and some correspondingly small fraction of feedback from those pins is transmitted to the torque tool.

[Gundanium]

Definantly food for thought, sort of makes you think and know there are smaller and better tension wrenches to be made, some kinda of adhesive or just something that locked in place at the bottom of the keyway that took up little room would be pretty sweet, like maybe a piece of metal you wedge in the bottom of the keyway that doesn't actually ruin with wedging it, Perhaps having a wire cord to tug the plug in a direction, i'm not sure what you could use to wedge it's self, perhaps something with a "rivet" type of action.

Like a piece of rubber with a hole in the middle of it, you place it at the bottom of the cylinder then you put an aproperiate piece of what ever, rubber perhaps to apply pressure on the plugs bottom sides also attached to a metal wire or what ever to turn it. I'll draw a picture of what i'm thinking.

[cracksman]

Eric, you make a good argument and I agree with you in theory. In practice however, I can't imagine a human being can produce the precise amount of torque with one hand, using two seperate picks, in order to rotate the plug. I think there is an actual advantage to putting a slight amount of friction between plug and housing. Much like firing a gun, if you have the advantage of resting the gun on a bench, or even resting a shoulder on a wall, you are more steady, and in turn this allows youre fine motor skills to take over. Furthermore, as I don't think it is possible to keep a plug completely centered while in torque, the slight horizontol and vertical motions of the plug would actually cause a random set of bindings that would be much more difficult to read.

If, however, you could create a machine that could limit any plug movement other than rotation, then I agree with your theory.

just my 2 cents