maintenanceguy wrote:And it is difficult to feel when a pin sets and lots of times it happens and you don't notice until the lock opens.
If you're using super light tension, sure, feedback is pretty lame and picking consistently can be frustrating. That's what I did for a long time when I started out, probably spent the guts of a year picking like that... only times I really had control were with spools. Which is all well and good, but once you get into stuff with really tight tolerances and no security pins, it just doesn't cut it anymore. Take lockwood for example... you can't feel a thing in those if you use really light tension. It's pure luck, basically. I wasn't happy with that. I was also annoyed that I struggled to open even some of my cheapo locks consistently. Sometimes they'd go in 20 seconds, then I'd try again and sit for 10 minutes before getting frustrated and moving on to something else. Regular pins were the bane of my life, seems a lot of guys find the same thing.
Anyway, what I learned through progressive pinning (and I didn't even bother with that until I started getting into high sec stuff, which I regret) was that it's really important to find a balance between tension and pick pressure if you actually want any real sense of what's going on inside. If you do that, the pins will give very clear feedback while at the same time it doesn't take excessive force to move them into place. Providing you can identify overset pins and take an analytical approach, it's a very reliable technique. Going back to those same locks that used to annoy me now, I can pick them every time with speed, and even tell the exact binding order. Amazing stuff.
More tension is the key, not less. Obviously you need to adjust your tension for the counter rotation from spools, and to drop pins when you're in overset, but generally speaking anyway... and when I say more, I don't mean a lot, just don't focus all your energy on holding a hairs weight against the wrench. It takes a fair bit of practice, more precise pick movement, and maybe a little more thinking/patience, but it's worth the effort. That feel when you get onto a pin, you know it's the last one, and feel it slide slowly into place then *POP*. Can't beat that.
