gas flow curiousity (lack of)

[Dave in Denver]

The 1931 Closed Cab truck would not start this morning. (This is newly rebuilt engine that has ran in the past but has sat for about 6 weeks since my family and work kept me away from the old cars and the garage.

I checked for spark (strong), timing is good, lots of air, but no gas. I have an electric fuel pump that feeds the weber 32/36 dgv carb on the 4 banger engine. As an experiement I took off the glass sediment buld and drained it, reintalled it with the rubber gasket and wire mesh filter to see if when the gas valve was turned on it would refill. To my surprise it would not refill. So I loosened the nut on the bottom a bit and the gas flowed filled the glass bulb and began to leak outside the assembly. I tightened the bottom nut tnad the gas flow stopped again.

My questions:

I am I wrong to have a rubber gasket on top of the glass bulb?
I have seen cork gaskets for the assembly, might it work better, provide a good seal but allow gas to flow?
Has this happened to anyone else?

To make sure I had good flow during th experiment, I tries it with the gas cap on and the gas cap off, both with same results. The gas tank is half full of new gas. The flow was tested with and without the fuel pump running and when the nut was tight no gas flowed.

Thanks, Dave