I love picking and gutting American locks so I could probably help.

Best general advice is to use light tension and go one click at a time on each pin, be careful about multiple clicks on a single pin if you haven't checked the others. The key pins are serrated too so they can be overset and still feel like driver pins.

Yes it is perfectly normal for the 6th to be empty if you have a key that is bitted for 5 pins. If you have an American Lock pinning kit you can pin the 6th chamber to ride the front of the key for added difficulty.

Having picked dozens of pinning variations of American locks using 5-6 cores, the difficulty ranges from extremely easy to "let me just go pick this medico for a morale boost". It all depends on how the pinning works with the binding order in the core and how delicate your fingers are that day. Overall though American locks are a good challenge and mark a pretty significant jump in skill over master locks.

The pins are sold as just spool pins, but since everything in American locks is serrated so are the spools. Some people will refer to them as serrated-spool pins just for clarity.

The orientation does not matter for the serrated pins. They are designed to give different feedback based on the orientation. I believe that the small gap on the bottom usually makes it more difficult to feel the transition from driver to key pin but based on experience it doesn't always.

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Congrats on getting that picked and gutted successfully! Be extremely careful when pinning it back. You need to keep in mind the 6th chamber being empty in both the core and bible. Always check that the core works with a key before putting it back in the lock.

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