I have an Italian floor corker that when compressing a cork one of the irises opens up a 1/16" or so which leaves a crease in synthetic corks and everyone will leak as soon as it's laid on it's side but being that natural corks are more pliable most of them do ok, of coarse I never really paid attention in the past because I always used natural or agglomerated corks.
Also I talked to the local wine & beer supply shop and was informed that all the Italian floor corkers they get in have this problem. Does anyone have a fix for this particular problem.
Rick, The only ways I can think of to fix it may ruin it. You may need to disassemble and shave down the flat of the one jaw that is creasing it. That's tricky, it can mess up the alignment of all of them. There is not a whole lot of brass to these; it would not take much of a mistake to ruin them.
What you may want to do first is pull the top off and loosen the fixed jaw (or jaws) and reset them; then see how it works. I had a heck of a time fixing mine.
The springs in those are under a lot of tension, be really careful working on this.
It is a known issue from what I see; I use a Portuguese with plastic jaws and it never does this and i have used most of the synthetics; SupremeCorq, Guardian, NomaCorc to name a few I can remember.... I use Nomacorc now on everything.
I only use my Italian one for sparkling wine corks now; I modified it to seat them partially.
Thanks Joe, I'll pop the top this evening and have a look. Being that the irises ride smoothly against each other with no cork inserted lends me to believe it my be fixable, I'll post the results later tonight or tomorrow night.
No, I don't think that would help. You can actually watch the segments seperate as you compress them; it's like it overcompresses one segment. (At least that is how mine was.)
Pino, I did lubricate inside and it unfortunately it made no difference.
Joe I trial ran the corker with the top off (have to be carefull using all body weight on a stick to keep the back end from flying out) and all goes well unless under a load. It appears that if the steel V section that connects to the handle which the 2 rear irises slide against were brought together/ closed a bit it may do the trick, one of them already has a large 1/6" gap on the farthest end as if it's not aligned or the V is slightly out of square. I will (Carefully) dismantle and attempt to adjust this weekend and post my findings by the end of the weekend.
The following is a scenario I've seen on 2 separate Italian corkers: as the handle is brought down the side links start to push the jaws closed; just before the bent rod begins to move the cork down into the bottle, the jaws reverse and open up a bit. On a properly functioning corker this slight reverse movement does NOT occur.
Rick and Joe, if this is what you are seeing I think I can tell you what the problem is. I've never used synthetics so I don't know if this behaviour is causing your creases. In my corkers, what it does is cause the leading lip of the cork to scrape against the hole in the corker as it goes into the bottle. This causes the lip of the cork to fold back or tear and results in an unacceptable closure.
Here is the cause! It has to do with the lubrication of the handle "journal" bearing. This bearing is a simple steel cylinder welded onto the handle. The bearing normally rotates on a shaft (also mild steel) that is threaded on each end and retained in the sheet metal housing with 2 nuts. This is a "terrible" design, btw! When the lubrication of the journal on the shaft diminishes (only a matter of time) the journal will "freeze" on the shaft and the shaft will begin to turn in the housing when the handle is moved. The shaft holes in the thin sheet metal housing take no time at all to wear into an egg shape! The result of this is that the jaw forces when the cork is compressed push back through the links and move the shaft rearward! This allows the jaws to open slightly! Viola! Crappy closure!
The solution to this would be trivial at the factory! A simple redesign of the shaft/journal. The fix to a failed corker is not so easy IMHO. I replaced my first one to fail. When that one failed I probed and poked until I figured it out. I now own a Rapid 12 (~$600). The Swiss "do it right!" We run a small winery and do hand corking for short runs and trials. For a HW the best answer may be to "oil the hell" out of that journal EVERY time you use it!
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