Flooding in condensing chamber Nixon/Stone

[poots2]

Howdy Folks,

I'm having an issue with my Nixon/Stone Valved reflux still. I'm just running it as a pot still without the reflux right now. I was doing a run and I noticed that my valve wasn't outputting any fluid when there was vapor coming out of the top of the column towards the beginning. I decided to shut it off and take a little peek and noticed there was a condensed fluid built up at the bottom of the condenser, where it should be going through the valve. I ignored it for a bit, but I feel like I'm getting a little too much "crossover" between my head/hearts/tails and I'm not getting as much hearts as I could be. I'm using an angle needle valve that screws in at the bottom of the product outlet area. (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Watts-1-4-in ... pvzauLRX6M" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow) to regulate my output. The problem is the thread is going too deep into the column and it's causing the chamber to fill up too much. Here's a crude picture of what's happening

Here is a crude description of what is happening with the valve in the column

Chimney.jpg (2.24 KiB) Viewed 675 times

Here's the section I'm referring to

Here's the section of my still I'm referring too

I thought about cutting down the threads, but the valve has MPT threads and cutting those down will throw off all the threads. I'm wondering if anyone has any good suggestions on how to fix this.

Thanks all

[rad14701]

Try adding some plumbers tape to the threads of the needle valve so it gets tighter quicker...