Stout Kettle Sight Glass Assembly

[disney7]

Anyone here ever taken one of the Stout sight glasses apart?

I disassembled mine to clean it, and was surprised to discover that the things that look like unions are not unions, they are just threaded onto the stainless tube that houses the glass.

I'm just wondering if there is a best practice for putting it back together and how tight it needs to be. It gets pretty hard to screw the triclover parts in, even with the silicone sight glass gaskets lubed.

Thanks

 

[gbarker121]

Funny, I just did the same thing.
What a pain. I think the threads are not cut very well. They are very sharp with a tight interference. I found that lubing the threads of both the tube and the elbow was helpful (along with lubing the silicone) but it remained a pain in the butt. Getting the assembly put back together so that it was the right length was just an annoying trial and error effort.
Good luck.

 

[ELA]

I had the same problem, and solved it by changing the sight glass altogether. I can clean the new one and put it back together in like two minutes. Great tanks otherwise though.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=522916