Originally Posted by
Joshua A.C. New
When you're applying that much force, wedging against the frame of the bike/post isn't anything like being in a vice. You're applying a tremendous amount of force to twist, and once it twists even a little, it wants to twist more.
Why does it make a difference where you cut on the bar? You mean, like, try to cut both ends at once? I'm not the engineer on this team, but I give you my assurance that, if you managed to get a bolt cutter around both of them, you're not going to be able to cut through twice as much material more easily than cutting through one side.
The samples that were cut with the boltcutters were not held in place by anything, so once they had bent a bit from the pressure and angle of the boltcutter blade, they jumped out of the blades. After seeing that, I would try boltcutters against the U-bend of the Ti while it's locked to something. The shape of the Ti should prevent it from twisting much at that position. BUT, looking again at the thing locked up and actually in use, that's probably a difficult area to access with a large boltcutter. You could also add some extra material at that point to add strength?
The design is good, it seems that any potential weak spots are tucked close to the bike and might even move around a bit if you apply force. So you'd need a third or fourth hand to steady the lock while you tried to attack it.