RE: Stuffing box question/can of worms
I'm not aware of failure problems with the standard, flax-packed (or Gore packed) stuffing boxes. The packing material wears out over time but this does not result in a catastrophic failure but simply an increased water seepage that can't be adjusted away. The packing is then replaced and you go a bunch of more years until you have to do it again.
On the recommendation of the yard we use, we run regular flax in our packing glands and have gotten nine or so years out of them before they were repacked. And even then they weren't repacked because the flax was failing but because we had the shafts pulled for various reasons so we had the packing replaced at the same time.
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