And then—here’s the part I never thought about—it just stays in there. It doesn’t magically evaporate. It sits. Inside the lock. On the tiny metal guts that are supposed to stay clean and dry. And when water hangs around inside metal for too long, well… you get rust. Or gunk. Or weird gray crusty buildup I don’t know the name for but definitely ruined one of my locks once.
That hole? It’s basically the drain. Like, for real. Just a little tunnel for water to escape so it doesn’t soak the lock from the inside out. Which feels kind of elegant in a way. Quiet little safety feature, no one notices until it’s too late.
I remember this one time I tried to open the lock on the back gate after a thunderstorm and it was just stuck. Like frozen shut. No amount of key jiggling or angry sighing was gonna do it. I ended up snapping the key. Broke it clean off. Turns out it was rusted inside. And I’m like, “Cool. Didn’t even know that was a thing.”
Would’ve been nice to know about the hole.
Okay but it’s not just for water
Here’s the weirder part. That same hole—so, yeah, the drainage one—you can actually use it to fix the lock when it starts jamming. I had no idea.
