Afternoon-
Having been warned about possible incompatabilities with the Nomacorc and floor corkers with brass I obtained some samples for insertion testing.
Two were 'live' tests with no modifications to the corker. Both of these exhibited the 'leaky' edges around the sides of the enclosure and corresponded with the four teeth visible in the die.
At this point (And since somehow my corker was rusting internally) I disassembled the head and began to remove the jaws.
Note- there are strong springs in here- while not as dangerous as I was led to believe, I would recommend heavy leather gloves and wood tools for the extraction process- you do NOT want your fingers to get in between moving pieces.
I tried wet sanding down the jaws with 400 and 600 grit paper to a reasonable level. After reassembling I inserted another Nomacorc and ejected the cork- only to feel the tell-tale ridges spaced at 90 degree intervals.
Now, in and of itself a ridge doesn't mean a leak- it means a local deformity that may or may not be conducive to air/water escaping. Therefore I gave it the presurrized soda bottle test- and it leaked.
Determined to beat this I found a length of soft copper pipe (3/8" which is slighly smaller than the maximum compression of a cork in the corker. To this I added several layers of blue painters tape (highly compressible) and about 1 foot (wound) of 400 grit sand paper.
This sanding spindle was then inserted into a drill and the jaw mechanism was activated to the 'tightest' squeeze.
Running the drill on low and operating the corker allowed me to polish out the teeth in a more 'round' fashion. Note that the jaws themselves squeeze the cork into a round-square approach and are not designed to actually compress the cork like a Venturi tube would.
After rinsing a Nomacorc was inserted and ejected with minimal ridge disturbance.
Another Nomacorc was inserted and left for 14 hours at the maximum compression. This morning it was removed (not inserted) and significant ridging was found, but the ridges were 'equal' in both dimensions- it is my belief that they will reform to the correct round surface. This cork is now sitting and reforming... I will report back the success or failure of the reform.
It is my hope that this will lead to an easy modification of the corkers without the trial and error of disassembly to run the synthetics thru. Grinding out the brass is a relatively painless process with a high speed drill.
And, of course, there's always buying a nylon jaw'd corker....
I'll try and set up a page of photos of this.
Jason