So over time minerals have built up on my kitchen sink sprayer, as they tend to do.
While I had done my best to clean the build-up from the outside, the sprayer was still spraying a bit chaotically, due to gunk and minerals trapped inside the head.
Cleaning this out properly would, therefore, require disassembly. Disassembly would require a pin spanner. So I bought one.
The pin spanner was advertised to go down to a minimum of 8mm between the pins, and the divots on the faucet are 10mm apart, so this won't be a problem so long as the Amazon seller doesn't indulge in any false advertising.
Hmm, yes, there was some indulgence indeed. Well, it's a good thing I have a shop.
Filing a few mm off the insides of the pin heads wasn't too difficult, just took a few short minutes.
I stopped short of getting it all the way down to 8mm, but it's enough to do the job now.
And... hmm, that wasn't the part I was expecting to come off. However, upon closer examination, it looks like the spray head is threaded together around the outside (around the outside, around the outside) diameter and even a little mineral build-up there is going to make it impossible to free up those threads, so I guess I'll just have to go with this. It does still give me some access to the backside of the spray plate.
Yup, those are some minerals in there.
Anyway, with only indirect access I decided to shift gears a little and go with some chemical removal combined with some back-washing to get the crumbs out of the inside.
Crumbs like this, for example.
I'm sure whatever this piece of o-ring used to be sealing probably isn't leaking. It's fine. Probably. What's more important is that the sprayer has been tamed.
It really is much more convenient to use when it's not spraying sideways.
