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How to Replace a Tension Wrench

Whether you are a locksmith or recreational lock picker, the time may come when you have broken, lost or forgotten your tension wrench and you need to replace it. Without your tension wrench, you cannot hold the pins in place as you pick them, nor can you turn the cylinder once you have set the pins in a pin-cylinder lock. Learn how make a quick replacement for your tension wrench and avoid the embarrassment of being a locked-out locksmith.

Things You'll Need

Paper clip
Needle-nose pliers

Instructions

- 1
  Bend the outer arm of a paperclip so that it points at a 90-degree angle from the rest of the paper clip. Do not twist the arm up or down -- when you are finished, the entire paperclip should still sit flat on a table, with no part protruding up.
- 2
  Grasp with the tip of the wire that you bent away from the paper clip with needle-nose pliers and bend it at at a 90-degree angle away from the coil of the paper clip. You only want to bend about 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch of the wire. If you place the paperclip on a table with the coil at the lower-left, the unbent section of wire should extend upward from the right side of the paperclip, then the tip of that section of wire should bend 90 degrees to the right. It resembles a stick-figure outline of a swan swimming, with the coil of the paperclip as the swan's body on the left, the unbent section of wire as the swan's long neck, and the bent tip as its head facing forward to the right. Note that the entire paperclip still sits flat on the table.
- 3
  Grasp the main coil of the paper clip with your left hand, with the unbent wire oriented up and to the right. Grip the top one-quarter inch of wire beneath the previous bend, and bend it at a 90 degree angle toward you so that this section of the wire now sits up when placed on a table.

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