Broken key success

[Keeping Up]

I had a small success today and thought I'd share it here in case it proves useful to others.

 

When shutting down the boat before lockdown last month, I managed to snap the key of the front locker. For a month I have read about ways of extracting a broken key from its lock; the articles all dismissed my first thought of "How about using superglue" by observing that this usually ends up with you gluing the broken key section irrevocably into the lock. All recommended using some sort of a hook to pull it out, but the big question was "how?"

 

My wife had left a packet of "TePe" interdental brushes on the bathroom shelf, and these caught my attention. In case you don't know what they are, they are small brushes for cleaning between your teeth (see here if you want full details) that look like this:

 

 

 

The brush part is about 1.5 cm long, and has 2 stiff twisted wires about the thickness of a hair.

 

I cut the wires at the very tip and then separated and untwisted them; the bristles simply fell out. After folding one of the two wires back out of the way, I flattened out the spiral of the other and bent the tip back by about 1mm as a hook. There was just enough room to insert this probe into the lock, next to the broken key, and then rotate it by 90 degrees. On my third attempt the end of the hook engaged in the key, and I was able to pull out the offending item and leave the lock clear.

 

Even better, the key had its maker's name (Lowe and Fletcher) and a pattern number stamped into the side, and I was able to order a replacement key from them on line.

 

SUCCESS!

 

[Jenno]

Nice to see a meaningful follow up.

On a lot of furums I see a question being asked followed a few days later by a "Never mind. Sorted now" post with no clue as to how the predicament was resolved for peeps who may be following in the original posters footsteps.

 

Well done that man !! ?

[jonathanA]

I use tepe brushes (far too sporadically for my dentists liking ) and have often wondered what else I could do with them. 

The fine wire might also be good for cleaning jets and other small orifices so shall stick a couple in the tool box