A well-cut brass key takes years of daily use. When it snaps, it is rarely the key's fault — the lock has been asking for help for weeks and nobody was listening.
The real causes
- Wear on the key profile, especially copies of copies, which no longer meet the pins precisely.
- Dirt and corrosion inside the cylinder — coastal Algarve salt and humidity are particularly aggressive.
- A misaligned door: the key ends up being used to pull or push the door, a load it was never built for.
- The wrong lubricant, typically oil or WD-40, which strips the original grease and then binds dust.
The warning signs
A lock warns you before it fails. If the key needs jiggling, if it turns halfway and catches, if you have to lift the door by the handle to lock it — you are weeks from a serious problem, not months.
The right lubricant
Powdered graphite or a PTFE-based lubricant, once or twice a year. Never cooking oil, olive oil or WD-40: they give instant relief and make things worse over the following months.
It snapped. Now what?
Do not try to pull the fragment out with tweezers and, above all, do not try to turn the piece still sticking out — that is how the key drives deeper and the cylinder really does get ruined.
Extraction is done with a dedicated tool in minutes and, in the vast majority of cases, the lock stays perfectly usable. We can cut you a fresh key on site from the barrel.
