ball pick

[1967pontiacfirebird]

what does the ball pick do or what is its purpose?

[sandplum]

Some people like to use the ball picks to work with wafers. Other picks will work also.

[GWiens2001]

The ball picks are sometimes effective on cheap warded padlocks, too. The half ball picks make excellent scrap metal.

Gordon

[1967pontiacfirebird]

haha. do you still use a tension wrench on a wafer lock if you try to pick it with a pick?

[GWiens2001]

The short answer is yes. You might find a few wafer locks that you can get away with not using one, but it is usually easiest to just use your tension wrench, torsion tool, turning tool, or whatever other name you use for the tool.

Gordon

[Altashot]

the ball pick. Not too useful for pins but, it works well on double sided wafers locks. I opened a few pool tables and vending machines with the ball and the double ball picks. Not the most important picks in my set but, they've opened things I didn't think could be opened. I'm keeping mine for those nasty Chicago's...

The single sided ball is useless to me.
I have a few broken picks in my set that have been reshaped to perform very specific tasks...
The poor old half ball was taken from the back, had skillful surgery and now has a place in the front row. It was not modified as a pick but as bypass tool...A tiny, tiny hook... Every pick is worth keeping.

M.

[Solomon]

What they said. It's mainly for double sided wafer locks, I prefer to just use a half diamond and flip it to work on each side individually. More reliable in my experience.

As for tension, many wafer locks can be "jiggled" open and there are picks especially for this technique. Although from what I've seen, anything that jiggles open will pick just as easily (and more reliably in some cases) so I'd say it's personal preference how you tackle them really.

There are wrenches specifically for double sided wafer locks too, which are springy and seat themselves in both sides of the keyway. Not a fan of them myself, they do the job well but they're just not my thing. Not for cam locks anyway.

[daniel22747]

I have found the ball pick to be great for larger wafer locks, which it fits neatly into. The ball makes pushing the little plates into place rather easy.