I do have something to lose. I don't want to bend it. I'm going to have the head cut from the square tubing and re-attached correctly. I did some welding last night on some farm equipment and it was rather ugly so I'm going to have a shop do it. Cut the high side and drop it by about 1/16".
The Portuguese was shorter and flimsier, with plastic jaws. I like the height and sturdiness of the Italian, plus I thought that the brass jaws would last longer. The arm/lever is about twice as long on the Ferrari and less stooping required. The hooks, as franc1969 mentioned, are for the bottle...
Welp, I heard back from both the seller and the manufacturer. Neither will do anything about the defective equipment because I bought it too long ago. Not surprised but also disappointed. The seller offered me $15 off a table corker.
I purchased it in 2020, unfortunately. The little bit of use that I put to it was so undemanding that I did not notice the defect while corking the couple of cases with #8s.
If I try to tweak it, I'm concerned that I would bend the tubing, which would take the iris away from plumb over the...
Haven't heard back from Morebeer.com but today I packed up my bottles and my corks and my corker and drove two hours to the nearest brew supply place and did some troubleshooting and brainstorming. Long story short, the root of the problem has been identified: the head of my Ferrari floor corker...
After a lot of fussing around, I was able to get a bottle with a 27mm diameter top to accept a #9 cork relatively smoothly but I had to "massage" the cork first by compressing it several times and hold the bottle "just so" and basically stand on one foot and close one eye and bite my tongue...
I bought it in June of 2020 from Morebeer.com. I just called them and spoke with customer service. The nice lady I spoke with is going to have someone email me about the problem I'm having.
Ugh, yes, it's the exterior diameter of the neck finish that's the sticking point. 27 or 28mm outside diameter bottles won't center and take a cork. 30-31mm will. Sounds like it's a manufacturing defect that I just didn't notice while I was using the #8s.
When I sight down the the closed iris, the bottle is definitely not centered and no amount of fiddling around will get it to remain centered during the process of inserting the cork. You'd think that it would be self-centering to a certain degree, once the cork begins to insert but such is not...