JamesP:Dude,
As stated in an earlier post: been there and had to do it at the 70ft stop in dry gloves, in the river, only once.
In the presents of Dan, Doug and Kevin. If your gloves are too heavy then they are the wrong gloves. I find the Dive Concepts black dry gloves to be the best compromise between flexiblity and warmth. I would prefer to dive wet gloves for flexibility but the cold temps on the bottom in certain places during the summer can make for an uncomfortable dive after 30 mins or so.
When we cannot fix it we change it out. Yes we all know how to feather the tap on a freeflowing tank.
What was fouling the diaphragm? I too tend to use wet gloves when temps and dive times allow mostly because I don't like putting on the dry gloves that I have. They work ok once they're on though. Don't get me wrong, under certain circumstances I would certainly open a reg to clear it but not always and not always immediately.
As an example there's a cave we dive in Missouri where we use a 120 ft bottle. We're not on it very long and those stops are short but it shortens our deco some and at the same time gives us extra deco gas. If we had a problem with a 70 ft bottle we could stay on the 120 ft gas with little effect on our schedule. We use 10/70 for bottom gas so we use the 120 ft bottle for O2 breaks at 20 ft also. If I had a problem with that reg I wouldn't bother to take it apart at 120 ft. I would tough it out and mess with it at a shallower/longer stop after the 70 ft switch if at all. And of course at that point swapping regs is an option. At this point in the dive our stage of bottom gas is useless and that would be the reg I would replace it with and IMO that would be a much more elegant solution than taking regs apart under water.