Locked Out
Well, a couple of days ago I had a fun evening. Kinda proud to be a wannabe prepper.
Anyway, I came home after work at around 7PM, tired and hungry, inserted the key into the lock, turned it - and the key broke off with a half of it still being inside the lock. Nobody was at home and wouldn’t be for days. Great.
Nothing on my keyring was of any use (I only have keys there and Leatherman Brewzer, all of them were too big) and my paranoid ass hadn’t packed a single paperclip for some reason. Good thing I always have my Leatherman Micra on me. It was also helpful to know how my lock works so I could maximize my chances of extracting the broken key (it is a disc detainer lock, so I needed to rotate all the discs to properly align them so the key piece wouldn’t catch on them). 20-30 minutes of struggling later and I got the key. Tweezers could’ve been extremely useful, but smooth metal doesn’t exactly grip other smooth metal, so I used them mostly for prying with them being the smallest tool on Micra.
With both pieces of the key in hand I rushed to a locksmith. There are 10 locksmiths in my area with 7 of them working till 8PM and the rest - till 9PM. The first one just straight declined to make a copy saying they didn’t have the tools (or the skill, I didn’t really understand the details). The second one was on a vacation for two weeks. The third one was a bit farther, but they agreed to try and make a copy, and 10-15 minutes later I got the new key which the locksmith essentially eyeballed. Luckily, my lock is old and pretty worn out, so the new key worked fine.
So proud of myself for solving this situation by myself.
