Putting a Sanke spear back together

I've been messing with Sankeys lately and I figured someone else might benefit from how I got the spear back together, since the spring can be fairly hard to compress.

Here's all the pieces (though I couldn't get out the rubber piece and stainless ball in the very top with this spear)


Here's it partially assembled


Here it is posing with it's friend, the caulk gun.


Compressing with the caulk gun


Compress it all the way down (but not tight, just get it past the tabs) hold the caulk gun and give the spear a strong quick twist and it's locked in place.

Very clever. I've never taken the spear apart, but I wonder if a similar technique could be used to reinstall the spear back into a sanke. The caulk gun end would have to be adapted to somehow fit around the top of the sanke and then it could compress the spear down to make it easier to get the ring back installed.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I use a channel lock and this is so much easier looking.

Sweet. Have you tried it with all the configurations the spears come in?

I've only had a few sankey kegs, all the same style spear, so have not tried it in other configurations.

After the spear is together I've not had a problem getting it installed in the Sankey. Once you get the ring halfway in I just work around snugging it up with channel locks.

that is very cool. i never would have though of that. Any difficulty removing it?

Zombie Thread Alert:

Sorry to dig this up from what, 5 years ago... BUT.

Does this work in reverse just as well for taking spears apart?

I would assume it would. You might have to hold the top part I the spear while you untwist it, but the compression is the hard part to maintain from my experiences. I'm glad you revived the thread. I had forgotten about this little tool. I will be buying another caulking gun soon.

I'm gonna have to try this. I made a tool by cutting a couple notches in the end of a piece of ABS pipe that works pretty well, but now I'm going to have to compare it to this method.

The OP stated that he couldn't get the black stopper out of the spear. I was able to do so last night on mine by inserting a flat head screw driver into the center of the stopper where the ball is and pry the heck out of it. Watch out though. The ball flew across my garage and I still have not found it.

awsome just plain awesome

Glad people are still finding this useful Saw the other day that caulk guns are also awesome for compressing brake pads/pistons when you are doing a brake job on a car.