A snapped key looks like a bigger problem than it usually is.
Keys break for boring, mechanical reasons — metal fatigue from years of use, a key that was already bent, or a lock that was binding and needed extra force to turn. The break itself rarely damages the lock.
The broken piece sitting inside the cylinder can almost always be removed with small extraction tools made for exactly this, without taking the lock apart or drilling anything. Once it is out, a new key gets cut and the lock goes back to normal use the same visit.
A key broken deep inside the cylinder, or a lock where the pins were already worn and binding before the key snapped, takes longer and occasionally is not fully recoverable without more invasive work. This is the minority of cases, not the norm.
If a worn or binding lock is what caused the key to break in the first place, extracting the broken piece fixes today's problem and leaves tomorrow's in place. It is worth asking the locksmith directly whether the lock that just ate your key is a lock worth keeping.
Do not try to work the broken piece out with pliers, a knife, or superglue on a spare key — all three tend to push the fragment deeper or damage the pins, turning an easy extraction into a harder one.
A newly cut key from a fresh original tends to be more reliable than a duplicate that was already a copy of a copy, so this is a reasonable moment to also replace any other worn keys on the same ring.
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