Several clues in Dee’s photo that his ring isn’t vintage.  Therefore replace it, or scavenge new valves from a new one if the all Brass look is important. Fitting new avoids making leak-proof home-made tapers without having the necessary skills or equipment.

Example below is from amazon, much the same available from the other usual suspects!

If home-made valves are essential, I’d start again as described by Diogenes.  Depends on how far off the as-made thus far dimensions are, but making inaccurate tapers fit together gas tight is liable to be hard work. Look up Engineering Blue if this is about developing skills.  Tapers are best measured with suitable equipment, there are no easy shortcuts.

Though her lessons are painful, hindsight is a wonderful teacher! However, I dislike her pointing out my mistakes.  I found buying books and magazines to be a good way of avoiding surprises.  And the forum has been invaluable.

Sorry if my answer isn’t what was wanted.  Be interesting to see what others suggest, but I think Dee has a seriously difficult problem given he doesn’t have the necessary equipment.

Dave

You have the existing male valve. Mount that in a lathe*, dial it in true, copy its taper onto a suitable lap and finesse the new female taper.

I think the same design is used in steam fittings, so past writings from this hobby would show you some ideas (see searchable magazine index).

Commission your business associates to make another barrel on which you can refine your technique. Or borrow the reamer and make the initial tapered hole yourself on a piece of scrap.

Minimal equipment – the same dial indicator used for concentricity is used for taper copying.

Tapers rarely need measuring, but often need matching.

The nylok nuts on the tapers may be inappropriate for a hot environment.

I suspect you may be using ‘vintage’ in the eBay sense. As you can see above, they are univerally called a ‘boiling ring’.

* because of the handle it is difficult to hold. Hot glue lumps of wood to it and use four jaw chuck.

Although skimming the cocks and making a reamer at the same setting to recut the valve bodies is the way to do it, I am not sure there is enough metal to do so. Looking at the OPs photos the cock’s taper is already right down into the valve body and due to the taper ratio only a small amount taken off will see the cock go a lot further into the taper.

A taper reamer in action

Final lapping of teh cock into the valve

Safer to buy new valves, available on eBay, Aliexpress, Alabama, Made-in-China.com.

These burners complete are often listed as “country cooker”. Or camping stove or burner etc. China appears to be still churning out these vintage burners. If they work  why change it?

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On 19 June 2026 at 16:30 dee Said:

 

Thanks for the real world positive contributions.

I’m a little embarrassed not thinking of a reverse image search. Apologies.

“or a blue or black spirit-based marker pen” Yes that’s what i did to start.

JasonB  ” I am not sure there is enough metal to do so.”.   This concerned surfaced when lapping the barrel, fine for higher grade emery, definitely a concern for a cutter. Good observation.

 

As for the temporary nylocs, UNF 28 is not so easy find in Phildas turrets, in fact there are few single locking nut solutions that would work on that type of milled thread:

.

This thing is branded, all the screw heads for the repair were what was lying around and were originally slot head. Certainly some of the above suggestions have strong similarities, but I’m not confident of “made in Chian” valves frankly.

 

The simplest solution may be to turn up a bit of solid brass to match the original taper, temp glue emery and rotate in the new barrel.

The thought of using wave washers instead of split spring washers on the taper may help centralise the axial pressure better.

 

 

The thing you will find is that a very small amount of metal removed from the diameter by emery or reamer etc results in a very large movement of the male taper lengthways, resulting in the male plug sticking out too far and becoming unuseable as spring tension adjustment is lost, handle hits the body, and through holes dont line up. Been there, done that many times on similar brass cocks on vintage machinery, so I know of what I speak.

Then there is the issue of getting the two pieces lapped together well enough to form a gas-tight seal. More metal lost, and very difficult to achieve zero leakage.

As you have a friend who can turn you up a tapered plug, you say, I would rather make use of him to cut the handle off the old  plug and join it to a newly made correct taper plug. This could be done by turning a suitable spigot and hole on each piece respectively and silver soldering them together.

Thats the way I would do it, having wasted many hours before faffing about with emery paste and the like on tapered brass cocks.

On 19 June 2026 at 23:34 bernard towers Said:

using emery paste will not get you a good seal, its a startv but suggest you end with at least 800 grit lapping paste. my pet cocks on my bike are done like that and do not leak a drip.

That was with two matching but worn tapers. Dee seems to have two mismatched tapers requiring more metal removal, viz his plan for emery paper glued to a dummy tapered plug, although it’s unclear from his description just how mismatched they are.

Timesaver brand of lapping paste is good for such finishing lapping as it does not leave embedded abrasive particles like actual emery paste as used on hard valves in engines etc.

Hi, yes there are laws and regulations about servicing gas equipment, I have been trained in the inspection of Oxyfuel gas equipment, which as you can see on the certificate it includes equipment maintenance, but, this is not down to component level, and it means I can replace faulty units, but replacing parts within any unit is not allowed.

Therefore you should scrape any faulty gas equipment, and replace it with new.

I’m not that likely to have to use this much these days, but it does cover me on my own equipment of this nature.

Regards Nick.