I broke my new toy already

As night fell tonight, I was looking forward to having another go with the pressure lantern. This time, I wanted to try the slow light method, which is supposed to be a little more gentle, and requires less pumping. Basicaly, you fill this special resevoir with metho and light it and let it burn out, then do it again, and this time, before it compleetly goes out, you turn the valve on to let the kerosene start flowing.
The only problem for me was the metho appears to have over heated the knob and melted it a little bit so it no longer turns the shaft of the valve. Of course, I didn’t realise this until it was too late. I tried to light it by adding a little more metho, lighting the resevoir again and then turning the valve with pliers. But I think by the time I got it going again, the evaporator part had cooled down too much and the top of the lantern burst into flames, indicating liquid kerosene was coming out (instead of vapours). Then just to top it off, the glass cracked from over heating *sigh*. I’m not very happy.