something rarely seen

billtwocase

was doing some house keeping while it's raining, and found the on my shelves. Made in the USA. 

SWEI

they're beautiful

Any idea what vintage?

Hap_Hazzard

By way of comparison...

Last fall I bought a new gauge glass set at my local plumbing and heating supply shop, and after using it for a while, I noticed something wasn't quite right with the lower valve. First the packing started leaking, then when I went to change the packing, the valve wouldn't shut off completely. Because it was the bottom valve I'd have had to let a lot of water out to take it out and inspect it, so I put up with it for the rest of the season.



When I finally took it out and took it apart, I noticed there were no threads on the left side of the stem tapping (see picture). At first I thought it was just a bad casting, but then I noticed that the male threads on the opposite side weren't cut right either.



The second picture shows the condition of the left inner and right outer threads. You can see that the casting wasn't aligned properly when it was tapped and threaded. But the third picture shows that the machining is roughly centered on the body of the valve, but the part of the casting that receives the stem tapping is off-center. How far off is hard to tell post-machining, but it looks like a couple of millimeters to me.



From the overall shape of the casting you can see that they are trying to save metal--or maybe they just copied a valve that was designed to save metal--but to make it work, both the casting and the machining have to be very precise. This casting looks very crude.



The crudeness of the casting makes me wonder what kind of a process could produce a casting that is so badly deformed without all of them turning out the same way. A lack of uniformity usually indicates a lack of efficiency.



It is also mind boggling that a casting that was so badly deformed wasn't detected either before or after machining. This doesn't indicate poor quality control standards. This indicates a total lack of quality control!



When you compare this valve with the ones billtwocase found, the differences are pretty striking. The US-made valves were clearly not designed to save on materials, but you have to wonder why in the the Chinese were trying to use less of the cheap bronze they're using when the US valves appear to be made out of naval brass. They'd find it much easier to get away with their slipshod manufacturing if the put a little more bronze into their castings. You can always recycle what you machine away.



It's amazing what one defective part can tell you about a manufacturing process, and this one is telling me they have their heads all the way up their a55es. I know there are some really good manufacturing engineers in China, but as far as I know they all work for Foxconn.



As for the glass gauge, I don't know what to do. I doubt they'll do anything for me at this point, now that I've used it for six months, but I do think they ought to know that what they're selling is junk. The irony is that I thought I was doing the right thing by buying from a local supplier--keeping money in the local economy and all that--but to get the American made parts I should have gotten in the first place, I'll probably end up ordering them online.