Broken Key Extraction

Broken key inside a lock can happen to anyone. Normally many locksmith companies will provide broken key extraction, bot not all of them as it can be a tricky task to do sometimes if the locksmith technician does not have the right tools or much experience to do it. As a locksmith technician with many years of experience in the field, I came across many type of broken-key-inside-lock type situations. Most of the time it would be due to the fact the customer had to force the key to operate the lock for one reason or another.

I remember getting a call recently from a customer who claimed to have the key break inside the lock of the front door of his home as he was trying to unlock it. It was pretty cold that night, so I figured the key was probably worn out and broke due to the cold temperature out.I took the customer's information and quickly went on my way before it began to snow again.

Once I got to the customer's home, I saw that the lock he had on the front door was just a standard Schlage lock. At that point I didn't thought about taking a look at the other piece of the broken key and grabbed my extractor tool from the van and started working on the lock. Normally I never experienced any issues working with the extractor tool I had, but for some reason I didn't have much luck at that time. I then asked the customer to look at the other piece of the broken key and I saw it was a Kwikset key. I then asked the customer how he was able to get the key inside and he answered that he though the lock was frozen, so he decided to force the key using a hammer borrowed from the neighbor.

Shaking my head after hearing what caused the situation, I decided to give a call to a fellow Boise locksmith technician friend of mine for advice before I go into the last resort of drilling the entire lock. After getting him on the phone, he told me he had a similar situation before and what he did was drilling a small enough hole through the widest part of the broken key piece. Then, with a spiral type extractor inserted inside the hole, s vise grip type pliers needed to be used in order to pull the broken piece. After doing all the necessary preparations explained to pull the broken piece out, I was ready to "wrestle" the broken key piece with my pliers which after about couple minutes of work was successfully out.