Sexauer Faucet Rebuilding Kit

I recently made a thread about tapping old style faucets for replaceable seats and was met with some confusion as to why I would bother. I understand that every area of the country is different and we are all ignorant to each others own ways of doing plumbing. It has become apparent to me that not all of you run into old fixtures regularly so I figured I would take a moment and show you the tools I use to fix old faucets, shower valves, anything with a seat and a washer.


This kit has darn near everything and if you think you need something it doesn't have you are probably wrong. In addition to this kit I have a couple more tins of washers and seats. This kit weighs a BRICK. The plus side is that I only make one trip and aren't searching my van for small parts, even if my wrist falls apart lolz.


This kit and several of the tins are from the 60's and 70's. Made by J.A. Sexauer Mfg. in white plains, NY. They also had a location in Louisville, KY. Sexauer makes the best plumbing service tools hands down. It seems to me that they may have been run by a methodical old machinist who made ultra-realistic n-scale train setups in his free time and had specific custom made tools for everything. Then one day he hired a plumber to fix his faucet and that plumber might as well have been writing calligraphy with a ballpoint pen because the proper plumbing tools hadn't been invented yet. Seeing this fellow struggle Mr. Sexauer knew he had to right this wrong and got to work at his mill devising all sorts of fine instruments.


The brown box is my faucet re-seating tool. I was lucky enough to get this set because it also has the four larger cutters and extension not found in most sets as it was an option. I actually have several complete sets(no larger cutters) which are newer but I like the bare brass and brown paint.


The leather roll holds a set of removable seat wrenches. Below it is my small tap set. I made both of those leather tool rolls. The large square tapered seat wrench on the right is custom made from 1/2" bar stock. I needed to make to remove some exceptionally large seats from a speakman three handle shower valve. The black wrench to its right has two spiral extractor ends for removing chewed out seats. It is a much finer spiral thread than standard spiral extractors. That blue plate is for checking the threads on removable seats and shows their correlating part number. Almost every seat has a different, special, extra fine thread and you won't find a tap for them in any tap set other than one made just for these.







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