[modeleng] Butane gas tank valve dismantling - OT

Hi there All,

I know this request is going to generate a flood of "that's" dangerous" 
and "needs to be done with care" e-mails, so before I even ask the 
question, let me just point out that we're a group of experienced 
engineers, and out Health and Safety person here is working with us 
(however that doesn't of course make us immune from something going 
wrong).

We need a small air vessel for just a few weeks of use, but the air vessel 
needs to have a large opening at one end.

It's been suggested that we use one of the old thick walled blue Camping 
Gaz butane cylinders, to the 1970's design, of which I have a few spare.

We've vented the cylinder and washed it out twice with water (and I can 
see why you'd want to do that - even after venting for 12 hours, when it 
had been closed again for 12 hours, the smell of gas from it again was 
quite bad).

So here's the question - how do you remove the brass insert which forms 
the check valve, which I presume is screwed into the top of the steel gas 
cylinder? We don't have a special fitting to go on the castellations 
around the brass inserts outside, also we don't know if it's a left of 
right handed thread.

I'm not keen to attempt anything before speaking to someone who's done it 
before, and perhaps suprisingly, perhaps not, I couldn't find any web 
pages on anyone who'd done it before.

It's been suggested we could drill it out, or machine the top off, but I'm 
reluctant to do anything like that - I'd much prefer to gently unscrew it 
incase there are any hidden nasties lurking within it.

Does anyone have any thoughts, cautions, warnings, advice?

Yours,


Rich.
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