Broken Key Extraction in Baltimore, MD

Where keys break in Baltimore buildings

A key usually snaps in a lock that is already fighting it, and Baltimore's housing has several of those.

• Shared street doors. Census Bureau estimates for 2024 put 8.7 percent of the city's homes in buildings of two to four units. A building door that every resident opens, several times a day, tends to wear its cylinder, and the keys cut for it, sooner than a single-family door does.
• Older cylinders. With 41.5 percent of homes built in 1939 or earlier, some pre-war front doors may still carry a cylinder that has seen decades of use. A worn lock paired with a copy of a copy of the original key is a familiar setup for a snap.
• Iced cylinders. Below-freezing nights are part of a Maryland winter, per NOAA's state climate summary. A key forced in a cylinder with ice in it can break at the shoulder, so use lock de-icer and wait instead of forcing it.

What not to do

• Do not use superglue on the broken piece. Glue can bond the fragment to the pins and turn a simple extraction into a cylinder replacement, which matters on an old mortise cylinder that could otherwise be saved.
• Do not keep turning the stub, and do not push the fragment deeper with another key.
• Do not spray oil into the keyway; it holds grit around the fragment.
• If the lock is a shared building door, tell the landlord or management, since they may control it.

Photos and details to send

1. A photo of the broken half of the key and of the keyway, showing whether any part sticks out.
2. Which lock it is: street door, unit door, deadbolt or mailbox.
3. Whether the door is locked or unlocked right now, and whether a spare key exists.

If the door is locked and you cannot get in, the request is also a house lockout. The broken key extraction page describes the service, and if the cylinder was damaged, lock repair may follow.